


For You to Me are the Only One

by flowerofnettles



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (But also vice versa to a lesser extent), (in every sense of the word eventually), Actually there's a couple of different cases as part of the plot, And the most patient wingman ever, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barebacking, Blow Jobs, Bottom Sam Winchester, But Castiel is the best friend they could ask for, Canonically Soulmates, Case Fic, Codependency Abounds, Concealed Identity, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, First Time Bottoming, Fuck Or Die, Hand Jobs, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, It's a pretty equal balance between plot and porn, Love Confessions, M/M, No pun intended, Power Bottom Dean Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam and Dean take a while to figure things out as usual, Sick Dean Winchester, Slow Burn, Top Dean Winchester, Unrequited Love (or so it seems), Wincest - Freeform, Worried Sam Winchester, accidental catfish, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:21:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 53,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27753013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerofnettles/pseuds/flowerofnettles
Summary: Classic trope, Winchester Drama version—Before the boys hit her with witch-killin’ bullets, the monster of the week puts a curse on Dean: either he has sex within five days, or his heart will give out. The catch? The curse was designed to make its target violent during sex, and naturally Dean refuses to put anyone’s life at risk to save his own. As the fifth day gets closer, a desperate Sam makes the choice for them both, by offering (with a little help from Castiel’s angel powers) the only person he’s willing to risk at Dean’s hands: himself. Only when it ends they’ve got bigger problems, because Sam never expected that a few nights pretending to be a stranger volunteering to take care of Dean could lead to such shocking discoveries about himself, his brother, and the strength of the bond tying their souls together.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 227
Kudos: 352
Collections: To remember and cherish





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to be honest—I’m SO excited but also terrified to be posting this. I thought about it for such a long time before I finally just did it, because I wanted to tell this story right, in a way that was true to Sam and Dean. So I’ve been rereading and editing for days and now I’m just going to be brave and post it. x) I really hope I was able to present this in a way that you guys will enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing it!  
> As far as timing goes, I started writing it in between seasons 12 and 13 but it can really be set any time post-11x04 (“Baby”); the only other relevant character is Castiel, and I deliberately made the timing vague so you could place it anywhere you want in the series. :)  
> And I feel like I should say this too (it’s probably overkill, but I’m still new to the whole porn fic thing so just humor me please!): I know the tags already say “explicit,” but…it really is explicit. I wrote it with upmost respect for the characters and the actors, but I’m still a little shy about posting it, actually. Fair warning. XD

_“You don’t ever thing about…something? Not marriage, or whatever, but something? You know, with a hunter—somebody who understands the life?”_  
-Sam to Dean, “Baby” (season 11, episode 4)

+++++++

It should’ve been an ordinary job.

You’ve really got to admire a witch that thinks ahead. Casting spells is one thing, but casting spells specifically designed to last long after your skull’s been perforated by three witch-killing bullets from two expertly-aimed handguns is next-level preplanning. They would never be sure whether she had always expected to die, or if she’d started planning it once she knew there were hunters on her scent, but either way, it didn’t matter. The point was that she _did_ plan ahead, and now Dean was screwed.

When Sam had said so, his older brother had laughed at what he thought was a good accidental pun.

Secretly the older Winchester brother hadn’t been able to blame the witch for the first man she took down. He’d never really considered it before, but if some dirty ugly manwhore ever did to Sam what had happened to the witch’s pretty younger sister, Dean was absolutely certain that a quick and easy death wouldn’t be in his playbook either. Although he’d probably have gone more for a few hours of slicing and dicing rather than an ancient, intense boink-or-die curse.

After the dirty ugly manwhore, though, Queen Revenge really should’ve stopped—but hey, nobody knew better than the Winchesters that that’s the problem with revenge. It doesn’t stop, ever.

So after the third infamous playboy in the city was shot dead by police for trying to force himself violently on the first girl he could find in the street, the Winchester brothers had to do what they do best: kill the killer.

But in this case, that meant doing the other thing they do best: get violently pummeled by destiny.

And this time it just so happened it was Dean who took the pummeling.

Now here Sam was, standing in an abandoned office building ten miles from the bunker, in the middle of the night, freezing his ass off, after lying to his brother’s face in hopes of saving him down the line. He wondered, vaguely in the back of his mind, when this pattern was going to stop.

“Sam.”

He turned at the familiar low murmur and saw a solemn man in a tan trench coat where there had been nothing before.

“Cas,” he breathed in relief. “Thanks for coming.”

“Of course. You said in your prayer that it was an emergency. Is Dean all right?”

Sam swallowed and clenched his jaw.

“No,” he whispered. “Look, I can’t explain the whole thing. I just don’t think there’s time. There was this witch and she cast a spell on Dean, and long story short. . .he has to have sex, or he’s going to die.”

He saw the surprise light the calm blue of Castiel’s eyes, followed by confusion.

“I don’t understand. Why is this a problem?”

Because of course that would be a legitimate question, because they both knew Dean, and even though he hadn’t been as adamant about scoping out the bars in the last few years, he was still _Dean_.

“It’s not like. . .normal,” was the only way Sam could think to say it, but according to the tilt of Cas’ head, the angel needed more.

So Sam grimaced and just went for it.

“All the past victims of this witch’s spell were known for their unhealthy sexual habits,” he began, hurrying his words. “But when they got the curse, they became downright violent. They had left marks on their partners before, but now they left actual injuries—life-threatening injuries, in two of the three cases. Dean’s not like them, of course, but he’s— _we’re_ afraid that the same thing is going to happen to him, so he can’t just go out and pick up a girl from anywhere. But if he doesn’t have sex, it’s going to kill him. He can’t just wait it out and hope it goes away; it’ll be too much stress on his body, and his heart will give out. That’s what happened to the second guy. We thought killing her would undo the curse, but she’s dead and Dean’s still under it.”

“So what do you need me to do?”

Sam shot him a quick look of disbelief before remembering that this was _Cas_ , and sometimes Cas took a little extra time to _get it_.

“Well, can you cure him?”

He saw the doubtfulness in Cas’s eyes, and the disappointment started to form a cold and heavy knot in his gut before the angel spoke, hesitantly.

“This isn’t a sickness or an injury,” he said like an apology. “If you say the witch is already dead, her skills must have been more than the common practitioner of magic; she must have created the spell herself and infused her power with it so that one continues to fuel the other, like a symbiosis, even after the host is gone, until the curse has completed its purpose. Spellwork like that has always been dangerous to tamper with and impossible to predict; only the witch that put the curse on Dean would know exactly how to reverse it. But since she’s dead. . .”

Sam winced. They couldn’t have known, but it still stung to think that they’d so ruthlessly destroyed their best chance.

“So what do we do? Any ideas?”

“I could try to cure Dean,” Cas replied readily, but Sam could see the apprehension in his face even in the dim light, “but being the last victim before her death means that the witch’s magic has connected itself with him. It’s bound to the curse and settled into his blood and bones now. I could try to disconnect it, but the results could be. . .unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant, like how?”

“Trying to pull the magic out could shatter him on the inside, literally—unbalance it and every cell in his body could explode at once.”

Sam felt himself pale and swallowed with a tense flex of his jaw.

“It’s a fifty-fifty shot, Sam,” Cas continued, looking as displeased with the thought as the hunter felt. “Well, more sixty-forty, really. I’ve never done it, which means I won’t know exactly what I’m doing and that puts Dean at a greater risk.”

“So the only options we have,” said Sam, the first tendrils of real fear beginning to coil in his chest, “are to give the curse what it wants, which we can’t do, let you probably shatter him from the inside, or lock him up and let the curse build and build until his heart gives out?”

He looked into Cas’s face for his reaction just in time to see those familiar blue eyes narrow in thought. A flicker of hope cut through his fear, because he’d seen that look before and if Castiel could think of something he hadn’t yet, then bless him for it. Sam would take anything less terrifying than Dean _definitely_ dying or Dean _probably_ dying.

“There may be another way,” the angel murmured, and the younger Winchester straightened up even more to listen. “The magic and the curse are sustaining each other inside of Dean, but it’s like a reaction of chemicals—it won’t last forever.”

“What does that mean?” pressed Sam anxiously.

“The strength of the spell will diminish, and the magic with it. Little by little, they’re burning each other out.”

“So if we can keep Dean alive until that happens,” Sam finished for him, “the curse will eventually just fade away?”

“Exactly,” Castiel appeared as content and relieved with this as Sam was, by the light in his cool eyes.

“Well, how long will that take?” asked Sam with suppressed excitement.

“I’ve only encountered this kind of spell once before,” Castiel frowned. “But from what I understand, it would be many days, possibly weeks, depending on the strength of her magic.”

Sam’s shoulders fell. Of course it would be that long.

“The other men went out of their minds after three days,” he said unhappily. “After five, they were all dead. Surely there has to be something else, Cas—something we can do to make the curse fade faster.”

“There is no way that I know of to do that,” answered his friend. “But all we have to do is keep Dean alive until the curse disappears. Maybe that means we’ll have to do the obvious here.”

Sam had already thought of it before Cas had said it.

“Give the curse what it wants,” he confirmed soberly. “Dean will never agree to it. He wouldn’t let himself hurt anyone, not during sex like that— _especially_ not during sex. He can talk all he wants, but sex has always been sacred almost to him, not something dirty or harmful in any way. I’ve never even seen him leave a hickey on anyone. Even if she agreed to it, he’d never put any woman at risk like this.”

He stopped and huffed out a frustrated breath.

“We’ll have to figure something out,” said Cas after a moment. “According to the timing of the last three victims, Dean has less than seventy-two hours now before it starts to be too much for him.”

“And until then, it’s going to get worse and worse,” added Sam, worriedly thinking again of Dean at the bunker by himself, unable to sleep, temperature spiked, hands gripping his blankets so tight he tears them.

The curse became especially active at night, they’d learned from the first vic, and the longer the sun had stayed down, the more Dean had struggled to hide his trembling. But Sam had noticed it, of course. Given their history and all the times they’d missed key signs, Dean and Sam Winchester did nothing _but_ notice each other these days. It was almost ridiculous, how one or two nights of the month Sam lay awake in bed, replaying the days in his mind, picking apart every move Dean had made and every word he’d spoken, just to make sure his brother was okay and not hiding anything important. It wasn’t a sign of distrust, not at all; it was just that the older they got, the more they realized that they were one of the few constant things to each other, and the more determined they got to keep each other—and to keep each other as happy and sane as possible.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I wish I knew of a better way.”

“No, Cas. It was our mistake. We underestimated the witch and got ourselves into this. We’ll figure something out. Let me talk to Dean.”

Castiel nodded and in the sound of wings beating air once, he was gone.

+++++++

Talking to Dean went exactly like he’d thought it would.

“No, Sam. _Hell_ , no.”

“But, Dean—”

“I’m telling you, Sam, don’t argue with me on this,” his big brother cut him off in that tone that would silence anyone not accustomed to it. “I’m not doing it. That’s it, okay? Don’t bring it up again. We’ll find another way.”

Sam’s eyes were tired as he surveyed the tabletop; his head pounded worse at the sight of all the open books. He pressed his fingers against his eyelids and sighed.

“We’ve been through every book here three times now, at least, cover to cover,” he said, as reasonably as he could. “There’s just nothing here, Dean—not even something to try that _might_ work. A spell like this has never been done before. We don’t even know where to start. And you’re running out of time.”

Dean was silent for a moment, and though his back was turned, Sam could see by the line of his shoulders that he wasn’t near relenting yet. But he could also see that Dean’s whole body was trembling, despite how much he was trying to hide it. Just like with the others, the tension was building in him and Sam could feel his own heart tighten in sympathy.

“We have somewhere to start,” Dean countered at last. “Cas said he could get the curse off me.”

“He said he could _try_ to get it off you,” Sam corrected meaningfully. “But odds are he’ll kill you. You do realize that, right?”

“He’ll have to kill me, then,” Dean shot back almost before Sam could even finish his sentence.

Immediately, Sam could see the anger drain from his brother, leaving behind nothing but an insecure sort of resolution. Then those familiar green eyes met Sam’s once again, but before Dean could speak, his face went suddenly white and he swayed where he stood, body shaking like a convulsion overtaking him. 

“Dean!”

Sam was out of his chair and supporting his brother in an instant, just stopping him from hitting the floor. He could feel Dean’s knees buckling and see how his fingers twitched as he pressed his palm against his sweaty forehead. Dean’s breaths were coming out in shallow gasps and the grip he had on Sam’s strong arm was seemingly the only thing keeping him upright.

“I’m okay,” came the gruff murmur, but Sam didn’t let him go until he could bear his own weight and he repeated more strongly, “I’m _fine_ , Sam.” 

Sam allowed Dean to push away from him but never took his eyes off him in case he lost his balance again.

“I’m not hurting anyone,” Dean said, much more calmly but just as confidently as before. “We either let Cas try, or we figure something else out. That’s final, okay?”

He brushed past Sam, but even in that faint touch, the younger Winchester could feel his skin burning through both their flannel sleeves. The fever had gone up again in a matter of seconds. He watched Dean walk away and his own blood felt cold in his veins; Dean’s steps were weak and shuffling, and he was trying to be subtle as he steadied himself on the frame of the door going down to the main room. Sam got an awful flashback of so many years before, when they’d both been so young and their story was really just beginning; an electrocution accident on a job had left Dean with a heart so frail he’d had only two weeks left. (1) That’s what he looked like now, except he didn’t even have that long. Another day, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, and Dean’s heart was going to give out and Sam would be burying him, again, and who the hell knew where his soul would go or how long if would be until they saw each other again, if ever.

“What if we found someone you couldn’t hurt?”

The words came out in a rush, and made as little sense to him as they apparently did to Dean, who turned around at the foot of the three stairs to look at him incredulously.

“What do you mean?”

Sam had no idea what he meant, but one thing he did know—that was hope in his brother’s eyes, and he wasn’t going to take it away.

“What if,” he said, slowly, as an idea formed in his mind, “we found someone…strong enough to handle it?”

The hope was starting to fade.

“Come on, Sam,” Dean growled, averting his eyes. “We can go sit with Donnie at the bar all night long. How many people in there do you think can handle _me_? I survived Purgatory. I fought the Devil. I killed friggin’ _Hitler_ , man!”

Sam aborted a roll of his eyes. All this time and Dean still hadn’t let anyone forget it.

“Yeah,” he assented, “but I’m not talking about picking someone up at Donnie’s. I’m talking about someone in _our_ circles.”

“Like what? Like a vampire, or a werewolf? You going to stand on a street corner with a sign—‘Sex with Dean Winchester, Indestructible Monsters Only, First Come, First Serve?’ All you’re going to do then is turn the problem around; instead of me worrying about hurting someone else, I’d be worried about _them_ trying to kill _me_.”

“No!” Sam interrupted before his big brother could start up again. “I don’t mean that. I mean, what if we found…I don’t know…another hunter, or something? Someone who could handle you, someone with the same skill set as you, or you know, really similar at least.”

Dean’s eyes were devoid of hope now and full of cutting cynicism.

“There is no one with the same skill set as me, Sam, and we both know that—hunter or not.”

Sam realized he had nothing to say to that, and he let Dean turn away as his big brother said conclusively,

“We find another way, or we deal with it the one way we can. That’s it.”

+++++++

Sam sat at the table, staring at the open books, for exactly five more hours before he made his decision. The sun was going down; Sam could feel it even though the bunker had no windows and he didn’t check his watch. It was like he could sense Dean’s torture building, like a growing knot of instinct in his chest. Sure enough, he found his older brother with three open Men of Letters folders on his bedspread, not looking at any of them but curled up on his side, breathing heavily and white as the pillowcase under his cheek. Dean almost never got sick, but when he did, he looked just like his eight-year-old self again, and Sam felt subsequently like his four-year-old self helplessly looking on.

He thought he’d have to lie more, but Dean was just too sick to question when Sam said he was going to get them both food.

Castiel appeared the instant Sam closed the outside bunker door, the flap of his secret wings barely audible over the sound of the chirping crickets. At seeing the younger Winchester’s expression, the angel looked as wary as Sam had felt bringing it up to Dean in the first place.

“How did it go?”

“He didn’t go for it, of course,” Sam confirmed, “but there may be something. Cas, I know this is a weird, weird request…”

“And all your requests in the past have been considered ‘normal?’”

“Right,” Sam couldn’t help but chuckle. “It’s just that this is weirder than that. Do you know of any way we could find someone—an angel, or anything—who would be willing _and able_ to, you know, help us out here?”

“You mean someone who can withstand Dean enough to be his partner in sexual intercourse with this curse making him potentially violent?”

Sam was actually surprised that Cas picked up so quickly; he wondered, fleetingly, if the angel had already considered the same course of action.

“I’m sorry, Sam, I don’t. Angels are not sexual beings by nature. You know that. Such a request would not be received well by most, and I sincerely doubt I’ll find anyone willing to say yes.”

Sam didn’t let this discourage him; he’d expected that, anyway.

“Okay, what about someone we know? Anyone come to mind?”

Cas’ eyes narrowed into tiny slits of suspicious blue, a look both Winchesters knew very well by now.

“Sam,” he said slowly, heavily, “are you asking me if I would be willing to have sex with Dean?”

Sam winced. He actually _had_ considered it, briefly, but he’d dismissed the idea almost right away. Cas was the closest thing Dean had to family besides Sam; he was their best friend and most reliable ally, and they loved him more deeply and profoundly than most real, blood families could ever love. All of that was clear, especially after all they’d been through in just the last few months, but Dean’s relationship with Cas would never be quite like _that_ , no matter Dean’s slight inclination toward men that he tried so hard to keep unnoticed. For Dean and Cas, it was more like a tolerant, affectionate parent and a reckless, clueless kid—though which one was the parent and which the kid was liable to switch several times a day.

“No. No, Cas, of course not.”

“Because I would, to save his life,” Castiel continued, reluctant but honest, “but I believe an easier solution might be possible.”

“What? You could’ve led with that, Cas. We are running short on time here.”

“Sorry,” the angel allowed. “But it is possibly a very unpleasant solution.”

“Well, what is it? I’m open to hearing anything out, man.”

“You know that, as an angel, I have certain abilities to reach inside a living mind,” began his friend, thankfully speaking quickly at Sam’s impatience. “I was thinking, it would be a relatively easy process not to erase the curse itself, but the memories of it.”

“Cas,” Sam said bluntly when he stopped there, “I’m not following. What are you suggesting, exactly?”

“Our goal here is to save Dean’s life,” their angel said what they both knew, always, to be true. “If, in order to do that, we were forced to take certain steps—put him in a room with someone and allow the curse to run its course, for example—as soon as it was over, I could instantly heal whatever injuries may result from such a scenario. But I could take it a step further than that. I could erase the memories of it from both participants’ minds. Neither Dean nor his partner would even remember it, and therefore neither could suffer any lasting effects. It would be as though it never happened, but Dean would be alive and well. As I said, I would be willing to do it myself; I am strong enough, after all, but I can’t erase my own memories. It would have to be a third person. We don’t even know for sure that he _will_ turn violent, Sam, so there may be no reason to worry about damage at all. I’m not sure how that sounds to you, but it is a possibility.”

It sounded perfect, except for one, obvious thing.

“Dean has less than twenty-four hours left,” he replied. “I don’t know how we’ll ever find someone willing to take the risk, even if you can heal them and their memories afterward. Dean could do a lot of damage to anyone, even other hunters. I just don’t know of anyone who would put their own skin at risk; I don’t know of anyone _I’d_ want to risk like that.”

But even as he said it, he had the terrible realization. There was one person. 

He couldn’t bring himself to admit it even to himself for several seconds, while he felt Cas staring expectantly, narrowed blue eyes watching what were probably some pretty interesting expressions pass over his face.

“Sam?”

It still took another several moments before he could find his voice, but at last he spoke quietly, hearing the painful recognition in his own words.

“You said you could erase the memory completely, from Dean’s mind and the mind of whoever he’s with, right? Like it never happened?”

The eyes got narrower.

“Yes.”

“And we don’t have a lot of options here.”

Narrower, and this time with a tiny head tilt.

“That seems to be the case. Sam, what—?”

“It has to be me.”

There. He’d said it. The words had come out in a terrified, sickening rush, but he’d said it.

Astonishment flitted over Cas’ face, and even when he was apparently calm again the next instant, deep concern still shone clearly from his eyes. Sam wasn’t looking at him— _couldn’t_ look at him, shame turning his face hot—but he could feel it radiating off their angel and knew what it would look like. He’d been lucky enough to be on the receiving end of Castiel’s sweet compassion more than once.

“Sam—”

“It has to be me,” Sam interrupted, half-desperately. “There is nobody else, Cas. If this spell affects him the same way it did the others, he’s going to really want to hurt someone. Nobody knows how he fights better than me. Nobody could defend themselves against him better than me. And nobody else should have to. We did this. It was _our_ fault. We both have to fix it. No one else needs to get hurt. Besides…if he found out that I endangered anyone, he would never forgive me. He’d never forgive me for this either, but…”

“I can make him forget, make you _both_ forget,” Cas finished, and where Sam half-expected at least a hint of disgust, he heard nothing but the same kind of regretful understanding he himself felt.

It gave him the courage to look up, and when he did, he saw no righteous anger or even judgment in the angel’s eyes. Instead, he saw a reminder of why they had stuck with this one being, even when they lost everyone else. Castiel, a long time before he’d become their brother, had once called him an “abomination.” Now he was not much older, relatively-speaking, but infinitely wiser and kinder, and he was looking at Sam with the upmost respect. The sight of it wasn’t something Sam was expecting to see, especially over something like this, and it actually surprised him for a second.

“Are you not the least bit freaked about this, Cas?” he found himself asking, demanding really, because it didn’t seem realistic.

The angel looked down to the dusty floor and was as still and silent as a statue for a long moment. But rather than deciding, it seemed to Sam like he was simply trying to organize his thoughts. At last he looked up, and the respect in his eyes had only increased tenfold and was now accompanied by a shining sort of affection that almost looked wrong on his solemn countenance.

“You and Dean,” he said, lowly, “are connected, Sam. Every creature in the universe who knows you knows that, but no one more than you both do, I think. You’re soulmates. You even shared the same heaven. Why shouldn’t you share this as well? After all, the act itself isn’t wrong, and the first humans could have been considered siblings when they procreated—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Sam stopped him dead. “I get it. You’re not freaked out about this, but _I_ am, Cas. This is wrong in… _so_ many ways, to me, and you can sure as hell bet that it will be for Dean too. I don’t even want to think about how he’s going to react.”

“I might be able to help with that as well.”

That statement, delivered with even more calm than before, gave Sam enough self-awareness to deliberately calm himself to slow his pounding heart.

“I can erase Dean’s memories after the fact,” Castiel continued, thoughtfully, “but before, I can touch his sight and make it so that he can’t recognize you.”

“How so?” Sam pressed, hardly daring to believe Cas could save him so thoroughly twice in one night.

“I can alter his perception so that his mind won’t be able to make the connection. You’d look the same to him as always, but his eyes would tell his mind that he was seeing someone else. He would look directly at you and you would be a stranger. He’d never even know it’s you, even before the memories are erased. I could do the same to you, if you’d prefer.”

Sam swallowed; fear still sat heavily in his veins, but the familiar feeling of a plan coming together overrode that. This could actually work out perfectly—for Dean, at least.

“No,” he answered. “One of us has to be fully aware of what’s going on, in case something goes wrong.”

“Are you certain, Sam? You know what that will mean for you.”

“I know.” The very thought of it was sickening him. “But this is Dean, and we have to do this, to save him. As long as you can erase the memories, I’ll be fine.”

Cas’ gaze lingered on him for another minute, but he smiled that vague little smile that was more uplifting than any of his words could ever be.

“I know you will be.”

+++++++

1\. Reference to Faith (1x12)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know not a lot happened so far, but trust me, this is just the beginning. This fic is around 50,000 words total, split into ten or eleven chapters (not sure yet), and I’ll be posting probably every three or four days or so. Just so you know what to expect. x) Oh, and if anybody sees anything wrong with my tags, please let me know! I'm still getting good at the tagging system. Thanks so much for reading this first chapter!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read and commented! This next chapter is the big one so be sure to note all the tags (aka the explicit ones haha). Sorry it's such a long chunk of a chapter, but really there was no good place to cut it so I hope that's okay and not too overwhelming. Here goes nothing….

Dean was no less open-minded than the first time, particularly after his second night without sleep.

“What did I tell you, Sam? I told you not to ever bring it up again. I meant that. One more time, and I swear I’m going to start throwing punches.”

“Just hear me out,” Sam replied hastily, standing between Dean and his bedroom door so that his big brother could not go around him. “Please, Dean, this is different. We have a plan.”

“We? Who’s we?”

Sam swallowed, the conversation drifting through his head, but he had always been good at hiding his emotions when it was necessary.

“Me and Cas,” he answered. “Look, he’s an angel, right? Means he’s a lot faster than we are at finding things out. He’s been searching around for answers since it happened, and he found someone to help.”

“No, Sam. No psychics, no healers—I don’t want to mess with _any_ of that. You know it never ends well.”

“Dean, would you let me finish what I’m trying to say? This person isn’t anything like that.”

“Then what?”

When those sharp, discerning green eyes met his, every instinct in Sam’s body wanted to look away in shame at his next words. But while Sam Winchester had many faults of which he was fully aware, he wasn’t a coward. At least he could say that much about himself. An arrogant asshole and a lying bastard sometimes, maybe, but not a coward.

“It’s…”

Dean gave him a hard, impatient look when he trailed off.

“It’s another hunter.”

There was barely a beat of comprehension time, and then the explosion he knew was coming when he and Cas had set up all the details of this plan not thirty minutes ago.

“A _hunter_? Really, Sam? _That’s_ your and Cas’s big brilliant idea? Oh, yeah, that was really worth the wait. I’m so glad you came all the way in here to hit me with _that_.”

His words might’ve had more the effect he’d wanted, if he hadn’t half-collapsed into Sam at that same second. This time, despite his fuming annoyance, he didn’t even try to stand on his own, but leaned into Sam’s shoulder with a tiny sound that might have been a groan of pain if he hadn’t bit it back in his throat.

Sam held Dean up with one firm hand under his elbow and the other around his back, his nose tickled by unbrushed sandy-brown hair. Under the distinct smell of sweat from his too-high temperature, Dean smelled like he always did—like metal and pine and car oil, with just a hint of flowery-sweet dollar-store soap. But Dean didn’t _feel_ anything like Dean in his arms. Dean was always strong and sure when he stood; right now, he was shaking so badly that Sam had to readjust his grip on him, and the bones of his back were sticking out like he hadn’t eaten in days—which, Sam realized, he hadn’t.

“Listen to me, please,” Sam found himself murmuring, and he knew Dean was hearing the desperation in his voice when his brother tightened his hold on Sam’s sleeve. “We’re running out of time here. Cas pointed out this hunter on purpose, Dean. They come from a long line of hunters and they’ve got plenty of know-how to handle this sort of thing. Cas put me in touch and we’ve already discussed it and come to an agreement.”

He hoped, fleetingly, that Dean wouldn’t notice the distinct lack of gender in his explanation. There would be time for all that later.

“Agreement?” Dean’s voice was rough and shaky as he pushed away from Sam to look at him. “What, you’re gonna _pay_ for me to break her bones, and possibly kill her, during sex? I can’t believe you, Sam. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“It’s not like that,” he protested. “Listen, Dean, Cas knew we were pressed for time and he wouldn’t have brought this to me if he wasn’t sure. I’ve explained the whole thing to Alex—in great detail—and I’ve been reassured multiple times now that neither one of you will be in danger.”

“Alex,” Dean repeated the name as if testing it out in his own voice.

“Yeah. Like I said, Alex comes from a long line of hunters and knows the lie of the land. I’ve done all my research and I really think Cas was right. Alex seems legit, and more importantly, capable. Even with you.”

Dean seemed to be mulling over this for a second, and then,

“But it’s like a prostitute, man!”

Sam resisted the urge to roll his eyes in frustration.

“Would it help if I said I’m paying in favors and not money, Dean?” he asked. “The deal is an IOU—for future use. It’s more a friendly agreement than anything.”

He realized how pathetic that last line sounded, especially when Dean shot him a cold glare, and he shrugged with that innocent look that had always worked when he’d been a sometimes-disobedient kid with his big brother wrapped around his finger. (After all, nothing had really changed, even with everything.) Then he turned serious again.

“Dean, please, just try it. If you get there and decide you still won’t do it, Cas will bring you right back here. We’ll lock you in the dungeon and let you burn yourself out, or try to pull the curse out of you. Just don’t make me watch that, knowing we could have tried something better. Don’t. Dean, please.”

His older brother was refusing to look at him, but he could see by the set of his jaw that he was pondering it. Sam held his breath when he finally spoke.

“Okay. If you’re really sure, I’ll go and check it out, but if I get there and I’m not one hundred percent convinced on first sight that you’re right about this, I’m not staying. We’re moving this party right back to the bunker and Cas is doing his yank-the-curse-out-of-me thing. Do you understand me?”

Sam thought he would feel a knew wave of fear when Dean would finally agree, but instead he felt nothing but the strongest relief making him limp.

“Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. Okay, you should go as soon as possible, like, right now. I’ll call Cas.”

“Not yet.” 

The protest was so sharp that Sam stopped instantly.

“Why? You have to go, Dean. You don’t have a lot of time left.”

Like being sick, Dean also didn’t look shy very often, but when he did, he _really_ did—eyes steadfastly to the floor, flaming red to the tips of his ears, the whole nine.

“Just—just let me get cleaned up first,” he said, trying to sound tough and commanding (but it was when he _tried_ that he always ended up sounding the least tough and commanding). “I haven’t changed this shirt in three days, Sam, come on. Give a guy a break.”

Sam blinked. He hadn’t even thought about how Dean looked. After all he’d seen him at his very worst, not to mention he’d been staring at him over a pile of Men of Letters books on witchcraft for the last fifty hours. But Dean was nothing if not particular about how he came across to interested parties. How could he know that “Alex” wouldn’t even be fazed?

This was just getting more and more uncomfortable by the minute.

+++++++

Convincing Dean to go without him turned out to be a lot easier than he’d expected. One fake emergency phone call from an hunter acquaintance about a wraith in Pennsylvania and Dean was quicker to suggest he go than Sam was.

“There’s no reason why anyone should have to die because we’re distracted over this,” his big brother had stated. “You go to Pennsylvania with Hascal and check out the job, I’ll go to Virginia and…meet Alex. Just watch your back while I’m gone, okay?”

And that was that.

So it was that half an hour later he found himself standing in a fully furnished one-story rental house off a red dirt road in the middle of nowhere, Virginia. One look through the half-open curtain and he could see that this place was secluded enough to be considered isolated from any neighbors but exposed enough not to make even the most paranoid of hunters nervous. He had to hand it to Cas—when it came down to it, the angel really knew what he was doing.

“I dropped Dean off at the end of the long driveway,” were Cas’s first words to him, hasty and anxious as he himself felt. “He should be here in a minute or less. Sam, are you really sure you want to do this?”

Sam couldn’t help but chuckle, once, without humor.

“Want to? No, Cas, I don’t _want_ to…let this happen.” The words made him nauseated even to say aloud. “But this is the only way to save him, so I have to. We have no other choice here.”

He felt a reassuring sort of justification when Cas simply nodded in agreement.

“I am sorry, nevertheless, but I truly believe you will be fine, Sam, really.”

“Yeah,” Sam tried to sound as sure as his friend but was only sure he failed. “Thanks.”

“Remember. If you need me, all you have to do is pray. I’ll be here the second you do.”

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam repeated, sincerely, “but like you said, I’ll be fine. We have to let this run its course.”

Cas nodded again. In the next heartbeat he was gone with only a rustle of papers on a nearby desk as his farewell, and there were footsteps on the front porch.

Sam was as hesitant about answering the door as Dean was about knocking on it, apparently. He could plainly see his brother’s silhouette through the thin, white gossamer curtain over the glass, but Dean was not moving to make himself known.

Sam stared at the ever-familiar form of his brother through the curtain and glass with a peculiar sensation of numbness, watching as Dean shifted from foot to foot, but then three quick raps on the cheap wood startled him back to reality. He almost considered backing down, but his mind was full of the image of Dean turning pale and fragile and thin in front of him before finally just slipping away, his heart stopping when Sam had every chance to save it, or the sound of Dean’s scream when every bone and vein and artery abruptly burst, leaving him in a billion bloody pieces and gone again to who knows where. The younger Winchester took one final steadying breath and refused to second-guess anything. From that moment on, he was Alex O’Brady.

When he opened the door, he was terrified for an instant that Cas’s mojo hadn’t worked and Dean recognized him, because his brother’s eyes were huge and filled with too many emotions to decipher.

“Uh, I’m here for Alex?”

Sam allowed himself a tiny breath of relief, and found it was easier to relax than he’d thought. Dean was here, and as long as they were together they would be okay. Even if the circumstances were all wrong and had no hope of being right, even if Dean didn’t even know it _was_ him, that was engrained in him too deep now to ignore.

“Hey, yeah, come on in.”

Dean was obviously struggling to remain steady as he took the one step up inside the house, readjusting his duffel over his shoulder. Sam closed the door behind him but thought better of locking it; the sound of a lock isn’t the best for relaxing any hunter, and especially not his fight-never-flight brother.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dean.”

The elder Winchester turned from where he’d been surveying his surroundings and eyed the extended hand somewhat suspiciously. But he took it and gave it one firm shake, and Sam knew from the weakness and heat of Dean’s hand that he couldn’t waste time.

“I’m sorry, you are?” Dean asked point-blank, releasing his hand.

Sam held his gaze confidently, just to be safe, and answered in a voice a lot braver than he felt,

“I’m Alex.”

Understanding took a second to register on Dean’s face, but when it did, the embarrassed flush was back twofold.

“ _You’re_ Alex?”

Sam waited patiently.

“But you’re a…a guy.”

Sam couldn’t help but smirk. Dean certainly looked upset enough to be convincing to anyone who knew him less, but he’d seen some of Dean’s browser history and watched him lean in toward attractive bartenders of both sides of the fence with that very effective dashing smile. That wasn’t to say his little flings with men were anything on the level of his nights with women; as far as he knew, Dean’s experience with guys was limited, but it did exist in secret. His brother still didn’t know, but he’d seen him tiptoe out of a motel office once when they were young, followed a few minutes later by the manager’s handsome son. Sam had seen it all, every tiny shard of evidence he needed, and he wasn’t going to put up with Dean’s faulty, masculinity-fueled concealment when the stakes were so high.

“Yeah, seems like,” he replied. “So are you.”

Dean apparently wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he just took a tiny half-step back and looked “Alex” up and down before speaking again.

“Look, man, I don’t want to offend you or anything. I honestly couldn’t care less. Who you or anyone else cuddles up to at night is none of my business, but y’see I personally don’t swing that way. I think there’s just been a huge—” He looked him up and down again. “— _huge_ misunderstanding here.”

“Your brother said it was an emergency,” Sam pointed out reasonably.

No way was he letting Dean get away with this. 

“Yeah, well, _my brother_ failed to mention to me that he’d set me up with a guy,” came the flustered reply, and Sam could just see him preparing an earful for his wayward little brother. “I’m sorry for wasting your time, but I don’t think this is going to work. You have a nice day, Alex.”

Before Dean could pray to Cas, Sam stepped forward.

“Look,” he said, and it was so much easier to focus when Dean stumbled weakly, fever making him off-balance, “you were taken by surprise, I get it. But Sam explained the whole thing to me, and according to him your other options aren’t good ones.”

Dean looked away, expression equal parts annoyed and guilted by that truth.

“I know I’m a guy, and I know this normally isn’t your thing. Sam explained all of that too. But what else are you going to do, Dean? You going to go back to your brother and tell him, what? That you’re just going to lie down and die because you couldn’t handle the fact that I’m not a woman? Because I gotta be honest, you’re not really living up to the hype if you do.”

Dean looked at him like he was insane.

“What hype?”

“You’re Dean Winchester,” he said definitively. “You stopped Satan, the Apocalypse, saved the world—several times, according to the rumors. You’ve died how many times? Been to Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, made friends and enemies with angels and demons, and apparently you’ve had the King of Hell on speed dial. You’re a legend. But if you’re going to back down and give up over _this_ , I gotta say, I’m disappointed.”

The older Winchester looked nothing less than surprised by this whole assessment, but Sam was fairly certain he hadn’t given too much away; most of that was pretty well-known amongst the hunting community. Dean _was_ a legend, and with good reason. He deserved every bit of good gossip he got.

Sam took pity on the torn expression on his brother’s thin face, and hazarded one small step closer.

“Look,” he said, more gently, “I know you’re freaked. That’s okay; it would be unnatural if you weren’t. But Cas, uh, the angel and your brother brought you to me because they know I can handle it, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

There it was. The pretense was gone, and that was his protective hero big brother looking helplessly at an innocent person he wanted to keep safe.

Sam offered his kindest half-smile, the one that he knew could soothe Dean like nothing else, and hoped it worked on Alex the same way.

“You won’t,” he told him. “Believe me. I understood what I was agreeing to.”

“You can’t know that. I appreciate that you’d be willing to do this for a complete stranger, really, I do. That takes a lot of guts. But you don’t know what I’m capable of.” 

A look of sudden pain passed over his features, and Sam could see him fighting for control of his own rebelling body.

“I can’t do this,” his voice came out barely more than a whisper, as he rubbed one hand against his temple.

Sam took the last step so that he was almost in Dean’s personal space, low natural light and dead silence all around making the empty air between them seem all that much smaller.

“Listen,” he said quietly but firmly, “there is no one better than me. I made your brother a promise that I was going to take care of you, but I can’t do that if you don’t give me a chance. Please, Dean—just give me one chance.”

Between the curse and the stress he was putting on himself, Dean looked sicker than Sam had ever seen. He was as white as the sheer curtain over the door, his brow beaded with sweat, his breaths coming out shallow and hitching slightly every few seconds. Sam had seen that before, too, when his heart had been shutting down back in Nebraska; the hitching meant his heart was skipping every few beats, giving out. It meant he was dying. And the clock on the wall said he only had three hours left.

“We can start small,” he found himself offering—begging.

Dean looked up, eyes full of a fearful sort of hope.

“Like what?” he asked, voice hoarse and tired.

Sam knew he’d made it over one more hurdle, but they weren’t safe yet—not by a long shot. He had to play this right.

“How about a beer?”

Gratitude swept over Dean’s haggard face, and he nodded stiffly while finally, slowly, placing his duffel bag on the sofa.

“Sounds good.”

The kitchen merged with the living room at the other end, so Sam went around the small table to the fridge, praying someone had left some kind of alcohol behind. He sent out a silent prayer of thanks to Cas when he found a dozen bright yellow bottles of Sol lining the lower shelf. He grabbed two of them and handed one to Dean, who was settling heavily into one of the chairs.

Dean wearily accepted the bottle and took a long gulp.

Sam sat across from him in the other chair and washed down his own anxiety with a burning mouthful.

“So.”

Sam waited.

“Do you…live here alone?”

In typical Dean form, he had pulled that right out of his ass. Sam smiled fondly and took another sip, mentally forming an answer for “Alex” to give.

“Yeah. Just me. I had a family but they’re gone now.”

It was sort of true, excluding Dean.

His brother nodded solemnly and drank another too-big swallow.

“Sorry to hear that,” he said, and Sam knew he meant it.

“Thanks. What about you? You and your brother have a place you call home?”

“Yeah. Well, it’s not really a ‘home,’ exactly, but it’s home to us. Wifi, running water, our own rooms—what else do ya need?” Dean punctuated his point with another drink.

“I hear you.”

Sam wasn’t entirely sure what to say next. Asking more about Dean’s life seemed weird and awkward, because he was _Sam_ , and he already knew all the answers Dean had to anything a stranger could ask. Turns out, he didn’t have to think of anything at all.

“You were right.”

He looked up questioningly.

“I can’t go back like this,” Dean continued, slowly twirling the base of his bottle on the tabletop. “The other two options…they’re not pretty, and my brother and I have a lot of bad crap to deal with. Really ugly bad crap. I can’t risk leaving Sam alone, not if there’s a better way out.”

“This is a better way,” Sam told him softly. “Trust me.”

Dean clenched his jaw, and then his intense eyes were boring into Sam’s with all the force of a vengeful god.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing here? Because if not, you better tell me now. I meant it, Alex. Say the word and I’m gone and you’ll never hear from me again. But if you know for a fact that you really can handle this—”

“I can handle it,” Sam interrupted, equally intense. “I don’t know how many times I have to say it before you believe me, Dean. Guess I’ll just have to prove it to you.”

Dean followed his movements as he stood and rounded the table, and Sam could see him bracing for whatever he thought might be coming. But Sam stopped beside him and said simply,

“Come here.”

When Dean didn’t move, but stared up at him indecisively, Sam rolled his eyes and yanked him up by his shirtfront, gently.

“Kiss me.”

Dean’s gaze flickered to his lips; he could almost feel it, and he hoped his flush would be mistaken for arousal. Despite his silent mortification, he pressed on when Dean still didn’t obey.

“Come on. We’re starting small here. Just once.”

Dean breathed out a shuddering breath; Sam felt it tickle his collarbone. And then dry, slightly chapped lips were on his.

He expected to be completely disgusted, and at first that’s exactly what he _thought_ he was feeling, but when timid, shaking fingers gripped his sleeve, he realized it wasn’t disgusting him at all. This was _Dean_ , and of all the insane, impossible things they’d done and shared, this was somehow the craziest. Maybe it was the desperation of the circumstances, but where he’d expected disgust, he really only felt a peculiar, twisted sort of fascination.

Dean’s lips were warm and undemanding, just a simple brush against his at first. Then the press of his mouth got firmer, and Sam hadn’t realized he’d screwed his eyes shut until after Dean’s chaste kiss had ended and his older brother was pulling away.

He blinked to find Dean staring into his face.

“Okay?” Sam asked him, breathlessly.

“Yeah.” A pause. “You?”

It took Sam only a heartbeat to reply, but when he did, his answer was honest.

“Yeah.”

And then he found himself leaning in willingly.

The second time, Dean’s mouth was surer, stronger. He cupped Sam’s scruff-peppered jaw with one hand but kept his other hand at his side, and Sam allowed him to angle his head to make the kiss deeper. When Dean’s tongue licked insistently, he hesitated for a half-second about opening his mouth, but then Dean was slipping that deft tongue between his lips. Madly, in the back of his mind, Sam understood why so many women tried to leave Dean their numbers after one night. He’d always known it as an objective fact from knowing Dean, but the older Winchester kissed just like he did everything else—with all the passion and focus he had.

And Sam, god help him, returned it as best he could in the guise of Alex O’Brady.

He must’ve done something right, because Dean’s other hand moved to slide up Sam’s side and over his ribs, a gesture he repeated three more times, warming the skin. Then, he released Sam’s mouth only to press his face into the soft spot between his throat and shoulder, and Sam could feel a wet kiss being pressed there.

His own wide eyes were staring unseeingly at the room as Dean’s hands moved in tandem to his back, pulling him closer. 

The last time he’d done this was in a motel in Houston after a demon possession case four months back; she’d been a soft-spoken brunette bartender with a mischievous but wise smile, and he’d liked her a lot, but she was still a stranger. Everyone they came across in their lives these days was a stranger, except Cas basically. Nobody he could find would be as familiar as Dean was. Nobody would ever be as close to him as Dean. Nobody ever had been. Instead of horrifyingly wrong, that thought came with an unpredictable sense of security and _connection_.

He let out a tiny sigh and closed his eyes, feeling Dean’s hot breath under his ear as the kisses shifted up his throat.

Then he found himself stumbling backward, his brother pushing him bodily into the wall, rattling a cabinet of dishes.

Dean looked intently into his eyes, and he could clearly see there was something there was wasn’t his brother—something dark and vicious and cold. But Sam wasn’t afraid, because past it, he could still see _Dean_.

He somewhat awkwardly reached up and slid his hands over both of Dean’s strong shoulders, making himself as vulnerable as possible (not an easy task when your nicknames include “Moose” and “Sasquatch”), and Dean took him up on the invitation. This time his mouth slipped lower, lips sucking on Sam’s clavicle, moving the collar of his shirt down as he went. Then his fingers were on the first button, and he was undoing it in one quick snap. 

Sam closed his eyes again, but as much as he tried pretending this was someone else, he just couldn’t. The strength of the hands undoing his shirt, the softness of the short hair tickling his jaw, the biting smell of The Life clinging to his skin and mingling with the warm scent that Sam had recognized since before he could remember—it was all Dean. And that should have made this so much worse, but instead, even with the curse, all he felt was safe. They were together, and together meant survival.

Somehow without his noticing, Dean had gotten all the buttons undone on his shirt and was pushing it off his shoulders adamantly. Sam stood up from the wall so that they could both get the shirt off his arms, and Dean tore it away and tossed it somewhere behind him, all the while his mouth never leaving Sam’s chest.

“Hey, nice tattoo,” Dean murmured against it, fingers tracing the outer lines of the anti-possession sigil.

Sam resisted a shiver when Dean’s warm lips—warmer than his burning hands—brushed over his nipple, but it was enough for Dean to notice. Without warning, he pressed a sucking kiss there and rolled his tongue around it, as one hand moved up to pinch the other one gently between his fingertips. His other hand moved around to Sam’s upper back, holding him steady as he worked.

Spikes of pleasure prickling him, Sam moved both his palms up and down Dean’s sides, feeling the muscles under his touch even through the t-shirt. He hadn’t given much thought to whether he would be aroused, but when Dean followed his spine down and gripped his ass through his jeans, he felt his body responding instinctively—another reaction he hadn’t predicted. He dug his own fingers into Dean’s hips.

“Dean,” he tried to say, but it came out a ruined whisper, “Dean, let’s go to the bed.”

The other man’s breathing was deep and deliberate when he pulled back, and Sam could see it was taking every ounce of effort he had to control himself. He gave a stiff nod, and Sam led him around the wall and through the doorway just off the living area. The sheets and blankets on the full-sized bed all looked new, and Sam made yet another plan to thank Cas for his unexpectedly detailed planning.

 _Nothing but the best for Dean,_ he could practically hear their angel’s voice in his head, and he definitely would agree.

The breath was knocked out of him a second time when Dean tossed him onto the mattress without giving him time to fold down the blankets. He gasped when the full force of Dean’s weight was on top of him in an instant, and that gave Dean the perfect chance to push his tongue inside his mouth again.

While he kissed him, one of his brother’s broad hands was in his hair, clutching it between his fingers, holding his head still, while his other hand was sliding all the way over his chest and down his stomach to the waistband of his jeans. Sam’s hands had been splayed on Dean’s lower back, but he moved one to catch before those warm, exploring fingers could go any further.

An animalistic growl erupted from Dean’s throat, but Sam knew his brother was still in there, so he turned his head away from Dean’s kiss and said firmly,

“Not until you.”

Because there was no way in hell he was going to be the first one naked.

Dean sat up and half-ripped his navy blue t-shirt off, throwing it with all the lack of care he’d shown Sam’s button-down. He didn’t stop there, but shifted back off the mattress so he could stand; unsteady fingers fumbled with the zipper of his jeans, but then he was pushing them down smoothly. When they were off, he didn’t waste a second before his boxers went too.

Sam didn’t have time to process this, or even to see anything, before Dean was on him again, this time both hands at Sam’s zipper.

Sam refused to let himself focus on anything else but the heat of his brother’s mouth on his and the strength of the shoulders under his hands, because if he did, he would have to think about the arousal building reflexively in his gut. He wondered as he heard his zipper if the arousal would be visible, but he already knew it would be, at least a little bit, even before Dean shifted back again to pull off Sam’s jeans and boxers in one rough tug.

Sam’s breaths were labored in fear and maybe something else, wide eyes watching Dean, who stood totally still, seemingly surveying his bare body. Part of Sam wanted to roll away and hide himself, but part of him also recognized that this was Dean, and Dean had seen him naked more times than he could count, even if he didn’t know it was him now. So he stayed equally still, until finally the other man crawled back over him. When he looked into Dean’s eyes now, he realized his pupils had changed; now they were slightly narrowed, elongated, and the stunning green irises overtook a bigger portion of the white. His breaths were deep and heavy, his every muscle taut. The curse was gaining control now. He could only brace himself for whatever was coming and hope it wasn’t as bad as Dean thought.

The heat from the fevered body over him was like an oven in the chilly bedroom, compounded by the intensity of Dean’s mouth reclaiming his. He wrapped his arms around Dean’s neck, and had a strange, unspecific flash of hugging him like this, just as he’d done countless times. It was an out-of-place sense memory, considering how he jolted and cried out when Dean’s hard, bare cock brushed against his.

That seemed to fuel something inside Dean, who responded by grinding his hips down and clutching both hands in Sam’s long hair. Sam stayed pliant, allowing Dean to lick inside his mouth, along his teeth, against his tongue, but he couldn’t stop the half-pained noises in his throat as Dean’s hips thrusted against him, evidence of his overwhelming arousal obvious against Sam’s barely-hard dick, making him feel torn between dismay and pleasure.

It only just then registered that he had never slept with a man before; he wondered, distantly, how he could have forgotten that. He hadn’t been thinking of Dean as a man; he’d just been thinking of him as _Dean_. It was different—so, so different—and yet somehow it wasn’t. His skin was responding to the touches in exactly the same way, his body heating up to match the one on top of him; he had never once been attracted to a man in his life, but somehow the pure _power_ of it was as enticing as any woman’s muted softness. He could do anything he wanted right now, and he was confident the hard, muscular body over him was tough enough to handle it. The intensity to which that turned him on was enough to make his eyes fly open in surprise. He always _had_ struggled with an addiction to power.

He found that now he couldn’t close his eyes again, because he was looking at the blurry, too-close image of Dean’s rugged face as he kissed him. It was definitely not a woman’s, and yet he couldn’t help but think, a little redundantly, that his brother really was a beautiful man. It was another one of those things he’d always known but never really considered. 

Until now, Dean had been controlling the kiss, but looking at him like this, Sam found the courage to offer something too. The raspy groan of pleasure was loud in the quietness when he caught the plump lower lip between his teeth, and he was shocked again at himself when the unmistakably masculine sound traveled down his throat and into his chest, blossoming a warmth that spread through his limbs and to his groin.

In response, Dean released his mouth and moved to his jaw once again; this time, instead of gentle and explorative, the kisses were fierce and demanding. He moved down, further and further, hands pressing against Sam’s chest, but Sam was done playing submissive. Just because this was for Dean, that didn't mean his big brother was going to get to do whatever he wanted for as long as he wanted.

Sharply, he threw both hands off of him and half-sat, forcing Dean to back off. He distracted any fight Dean might’ve put up by grabbing bruising handfuls of his ass, making him shift, their cocks rubbing in the motion. Sam hissed, because _damn_ , that had felt shockingly good, but besides tearing another deep groan from him, it had put Dean off-balance, giving Sam the advantage.

He turned them over so that Dean was on his back, and pressed his forearm across his chest to hold him down. The unnaturalness of the other man’s pupils seemed to increase, more of the whiteness of his eyes disappearing into the green, and Sam was ready for a fight for dominance even if he would eventually have to submit.

But instead, Dean reached up with both hands and pulled Sam down on top of him willingly. Sam allowed it, and found himself crying out when Dean lifted his hips up to rub their dicks together again, and again, and again. Then somehow the older brother snuck his hand down and gripped them both firmly, sliding his fist upward and tightening around the tips, squeezing out some of his own warm precome and smearing it over them both. Sam half-shouted at the sensation, feeling too many things at once to even understand it all. His head dropped instinctively to Dean’s shoulder.

Dean growled approval at Sam’s outcry, and in reward began to lick and kiss and grab anywhere he could reach. Sam responded in kind, letting Dean turn them back over so the older brother was on top, but clutching his hips to keep some control, his own body twisting and thrusting to rub their hardened nipples together, pulling sharp gasps and tight moans from both of them in between the sloppy kisses they were dropping on any skin they could find.

They turned again, this time onto their sides, arms and legs tangling. More of Dean’s seemingly continuous stream of precome slathered Sam’s stomach, mixing with the sticky sweat that now coated them both. The next instant, the clear fluid was on Dean too because he pressed his whole torso against Sam’s, wrapping his arms around him and squeezing as they kissed again, tongues leaving glistening traces of saliva on each other’s lips. Their legs wrapped together, Sam’s thigh ending up between Dean’s so that the other man’s crotch pressed solidly against the hard muscle.

He had no idea when exactly, but the pinpricks of pleasure Sam had felt before had all bloomed into full waves of arousal. He was hardly a virgin by any means, but this kind of sex—this wild, intense, desperate clash that was pulling the blankets off the corners of the mattress—was something he hadn’t even felt with his and Ruby’s messed-up whirlwind fling. It was like thirty years’ worth of fights and hugs and curses and tears and jokes were all piling into this one moment. Even though Dean wouldn’t understand a thing he was feeling, for Sam every touch was more shocking than the last. They had beaten each other before in anger; once Dean had left bruises that had lasted for weeks, but this was the most intense thing he’d ever felt for his brother. This was like wiping the slate clean somehow, and nobody was being damaged.

It was at that moment, of course, that his cell phone rang.

It was a generic ringtone just like any other phone might be. But he had made the mistake of underestimating his brother’s cunning before, and the sound of it made a spike of panic cut into his heart that he might be found out.

Unthinkingly, he shoved Dean off of him and dove to the floor, fumbling through his jeans for only a half-second before finding the phone; seeing it was Jody most likely just checking in, he turned it off and hid it back in the pocket. But that was apparently enough time to piss off the needy curse in his brother’s blood.

His sharp cry was reactive as a hand caught his wrist so hard it _hurt_. 

“Dean, stop!”

But his brother didn’t seem to care, and Sam could see that his eyes were now fully overtaken with the green, except for one slit of contracted black pupil straight through the middle. The older man yanked him back to the bed, throwing him down right-ways on it and sitting on him, knees bracketing his sides, squeezing. Sam actually felt a rush of familiar fear-fueled adrenaline when Dean snarled and his other hand grabbed Sam’s free wrist, pinning both hands over Sam’s head on the pillow almost tightly enough to snap the bones.

“Dean—” he tried to reach out to his brother.

His tone only served to make Dean’s hands and knees tighten on him. Sam recognized the silent orders for what they were, and against his every natural instinct, he forced his body to relax, swallowing down the discomfort of having those weird eyes staring into his with so much fire.

He’d thought that, sensing his submissiveness, Dean would release him. Instead, he shifted and leaned forward so that his bare cock was trapped between their bodies. Sam was unsure whether he should be alarmed or not to find that his own arousal hadn’t abated; when Dean suddenly slid his legs down, his heavy balls pressed against Sam’s throbbing dick and sent tendrils of heat through his belly. Like a reflex, he thrusted up, trying to find some relief from the heady combination of distress and arousal.

Dean wouldn’t let him move; instead he hooked his feet under Sam’s legs, holding his lower body in place, and his fingers got impossibly tighter around Sam’s wrists. He growled lowly, kiss-raw lips open so that his breath tinged with warm-smelling beer ghosted over Sam’s face, his jaw clenched in what usually meant anger. Sam could feel the growl vibrating from Dean’s chest into his own. His older brother was thrusting shallowly against his stomach, sliding through the precome that hadn’t yet dried, adding more to it as he moved.

Sam felt like the whole world all the way around them had disappeared, like somehow the curse had seeped into his blood from the touch of Dean’s body, turning his own equally as hot and needy. There was nothing anymore, anywhere, except his brother.

And he could _feel_ it. Even though he was under the curse’s control, he could still sense that Dean wanted to move, to do something, but he was afraid. He was afraid to let Sam go in case he tried to leave again. Sam had spent a lot of time feeling guilty, for one reason or another, for ever leaving the first time with a pocketful of Stanford brochures and every time since; a whole lifetime would never make up for it, but he could damn well try.

“Dean,” he gasped through strained groans, distantly aware of his own hips trying to thrust up into nothing, “listen. It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here. I’m not leaving. Okay? I’m _here_.”

He wasn’t sure if Dean could understand him, or could even hear him. As their bodies moved out of synch, each one desperately seeking a release, he kept his eyes locked onto his brother’s and kept talking, hardly even knowing what he was saying.

“It’s okay, Dean. It’s okay. Just-just do what you need to do, all right? Do whatever you need. I’m with you. I’ve got you. _Ugh_.” He strangled on a cry when Dean unexpectedly pushed back hard enough to rub his dick with his own. “Just do whatever you need. Oh god, _Dean_.”

His words stopped when Dean screwed his eyes shut, groaning like he couldn’t stop himself. His thrusts quickened; with each one another rough cry filled the air, reverberating in Sam’s ears louder than his own harsh gasps; another memory shot into his mind of when he had almost lost him, when his brother’s black eyes and cruel laughter had frightened him more than anything ever had before. The blood he’d injected into Dean to turn him human again had hurt him so badly he’d roared from inside the devil’s trap. That’s what he sounded like now, exactly, only this time Sam wasn’t afraid of him. Instead, the sounds made him so hard he ached.

He tried to free his hands, but Dean’s grip was unbreakable, so he could only moan and roll his head against the pillow. Sweat was gathering at the back of his neck and soaking the hair there; as Dean’s thrusts became more and more violent, a bead of sweat rolled off his brow onto Sam’s cheek.

Abruptly, Dean shifted again, and Sam had only just realized he’d shut his eyes when he found himself looking down at the pillow where his head had just been resting. Dean pressed Sam’s palms deliberately on the wall at the head of the bed and finally let him go; Sam stayed obediently still on his knees, his heart pounding and thighs shaking, wrists throbbing where Dean’s overheated hands had held them for so long. Crazily, he wished for them back.

But when those same hands were suddenly gripping his hips, adjusting him so his spine was arched, his ass on display, an icy wave of panic gave him sanity. He flung one hand back, knowing that Dean was strong, stronger than him, quicker, more brutal, and he wasn’t sure if he actually would be able to stop him.

“Wait! No, Dean—!”

The hand under his own froze, burning like a brand on his skin.

“Don’t—”

It came out a desperate plea, but he just cut himself off. It would never work. Flashes of the police report from the last victim filled his head; they’d had to shoot him to get him to stop, and even then he’d kept trying to get inside the girl until he’d bled out.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut against a sudden onslaught of hot tears. He should’ve planned better, but it was too late now. He steadied his palm flat on the wall and prepared himself for the pain.

It took him a heartbeat to realize Dean was leaning around him, to pick up the bottle of oil from the nightstand.

His breath caught in surprise, but he only had a moment of relief before one slick finger was smearing cool oil against his hole.

He choked back a cry at the unfamiliar touch, and his instinctive jolt away instigated a growl of disapproval from Dean, who gripped his left hipbone with his other hand in a vice-like hold. The finger went in quickly—too quickly—but miraculously without much pain besides a little stretch. Sam’s head dropped down, pulling at the tense muscles around his shoulders, and he moaned audibly.

The thick, blunt finger went in and out with just enough gentleness. The second time, it caught on the rim and made his muscles clench around it, causing them both to groan. Dean pressed another finger alongside the first, and Sam wouldn’t have thought they would feel so damn big, but the stretch now burned enough to make him tilt his head back up and take in a lungful of air. Dean shifted, and then the fingers of his free hand were tangling in Sam’s sweat-soaked hair, yanking his head back farther, curving his spine more so that the fingers slipped in and out more easily. They scissored inside him, and twisted, and Sam shuddered, his hands sliding down the wall slightly before he caught himself.

“Oh, god, Dean, oh, oh, _damn it_.”

He had hardly adjusted to the first two when a third finger spread his hole open even more. Dean’s hands were shaking in earnest now as they touched him, his body angled so that his cock brushed against Sam’s leg, the hot precome dripping into the sheets.

Sam opened his eyes for an instant and looked down his torso. His whole body was gleaming with sweat in the warm room, but the bead of wetness at the end of his cock was what caught his attention. Despite the discomfort, his dick was angry red, aching to be touched, arching so that it almost brushed his stomach where Dean’s earlier precome had marked him. In the indirect afternoon light, he could see clearly, but his own body blocked most of Dean’s at this angle. Still, he could see enough to know it was Dean’s body there; he could feel enough to know it was his fingers stretching him open to use him; he could even still smell him, a potent mix in the air all around him. 

There was no way, he knew, he would had been as aroused if it were anyone else. But this was _Dean_. And Dean meant _home_ and _safety_ and _strength_ and _trust_. He’d never felt all of that at once during sex before. He’d have been lying if he’d said he didn’t love it.

A long whine escaped his throat when the scorching tip breached him, and he had to force himself to inhale when he started seeing stars. Dean had apparently staved off the curse as long as he could, because Sam’s steadying inhale turned into another outcry when Dean unexpectedly shoved all the way inside with brute precision. There was certainly pain now, but compared to what he had feared, it was barely noticeable, and despite everything Dean had opened him up good enough to prevent any damage.

He had to readjust his hands on the wall, straightening his shaky arms and shoulders so that he could take Dean’s pushes. His brother draped his fevered body over Sam’s back, his own rough, frenzied cries muffled against Sam’s shoulder blade as he thrusted, in and out, over and over. One hand grasped Sam’s hip while the other wrapped around his chest, holding him in place.

Sam’s quieter groans blended with Dean’s, their combined noises making the slap of skin against skin sound even dirtier in the silence of the empty house. He arched his back so that Dean could go deeper, and when he did Dean’s cock hit something in him that made him jerk and almost sob.

Dean stopped for only an instant at the sound, but Sam let out a string of half-aware words meant to be reassuring.

“That was good. . .felt good…Oh, oh, god, Dean…”

Dean angled his hips so that he hit that same spot again and again with every thrust. Sam did cry out now, feeling his own cock leaking almost as freely as Dean’s had been before. He couldn’t stop his own movements, his body demanding that he meet Dean’s every thrust as best he could while being held still by his brother’s strength. He had never envisioned being taken like this, and he couldn’t imagine wanting it from anyone else—only this, only Dean would ever be allowed this.

Dean groaned, loudly, behind him, a frustrated but pleasure-soaked sound. He suddenly changed his rhythm, pulling nearly all the way out and slamming back in. Sam shouted helplessly, rolling his head down and watching Dean’s fingertips pull on his nipple, watching his own rock-hard dick bounce with every movement. Between thrusts, Dean’s other hand suddenly released his hip and appeared, gripping Sam’s cock and stripping it in time with his movements.

Sam moaned another curse, his eyes rolling back in his head against his will, and then Dean was shifting so that his breath was in his ear. 

“Come on,” came that voice he knew so well, weak and tortured and fractured like he’d never heard before. “C’mon, come on, Alex. Come for me. Come for me.”

Sam realized suddenly that Dean wasn’t done fighting the curse. He was talking above it, against it, and he wasn’t going to let go until Sam did. His hand scrambled to push Dean’s from his cock; he stroked, once, twice, until finally— _finally_ —Sam’s orgasm hit him, so strong and rolling that his vision went dark and his body half-collapsed. It felt like it went on forever, the aftershocks rippling through him all the way to his tingling fingertips. 

When he opened his eyes again, he was face-down in the pillow, Dean’s hands on his hips the only thing keeping him up, and his big brother was slamming in and out of him with more force than ever, his tight noises loud and real in Sam’s ears now that he wasn’t hearing himself anymore.

Three more ruthless thrusts, and then Dean’s last grunt turned into a long, low rumble. One hand kept his hold on Sam’s hip, while the other moved up to take a greedy handful Sam’s dark hair, and his whole body shuddered. Sam could feel Dean’s cock jerking in him, the come filling him up to more than he could take, so that it leaked down both his thighs.

Sam had never straight-out whined during sex, but the feel of it—the overwhelming intensity of it all—drew the sound from him. He moved his arms up to feel the softness of the pillow under his fingers, stretched his spine, and angled himself just slightly better so that Dean could finish. 

When he did, the last of his tremors echoing through Sam’s limbs, the older Winchester took another several seconds to move. He pulled out with as much gentleness as his obviously shaking body could manage, but Sam winced nonetheless, feeling more come dribble out of him. He dropped his hips to the mattress, muscles aching from being held in that position for so long, and for a while his mind was empty of everything, just the silence pervading all around him.

Then, there were heavy, questioning fingers in his hair, and he turned over slowly.

Dean looked as wrecked as he felt, hair damp with sweat and cheeks still flushed from his orgasm; even though his eyes were back to normal for the time being, he looked completely dazed and out of it, like he was just waking up from being drugged. With all of that, though, he was still aware enough for a shadow of worry to darken his face.

Sam gave a small, shaky smile, but he wasn’t even sure what that looked like, since none of his muscles seemed to be working properly either. So he offered him a nod instead, which Dean could at least feel with his hand flat on Sam’s cheek.

That seemed to be enough, because the other man responded with a sleepy, crooked twitch of a smile full of relief with a hint of gratitude, and then he was pulling his hand away, eyes slipping closed. In another heartbeat, he was asleep.

The moment he heard his brother’s breaths even out, Sam rolled, trembling, out of the bed and into the bathroom. As he stood under the hot spray of the shower, his mind was blank, but not unpleasantly; he’d felt truly awful numbness before, after Jess, after letting out Lucifer, after every single time he’d watched Dean die. This numbness wasn’t like that at all. Instead, it was like he’d run a mile and all those endorphins were pumping into his brain, like he’d just walked into a warm room after being outside in the freezing snow for hours. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d just been _relaxed_ like this.

When he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he froze and straightened from where he’d been tying the strings on his pajama pants. The mirror was fogged, but he could see his general outline and it was enough to banish the stupor. Staring at his blurred image, he allowed himself to evaluate, searching through his head for any signs of emotional trauma that might not be obvious yet. After several moments of finding nothing, he opened the bathroom door just a crack and took a long, deliberate look at the slumbering figure on the bed.

But there was still nothing—no pain, no distress, nothing even resembling that. It was just that strong post-orgasm peace lingering in his mind and his muscles. He couldn’t even find it in himself to feel guilt.

He looked in the mirror again, now slightly clearer as the cooler air from the bedroom pulled out the steam. In his own eyes he saw nothing but a pleasant sleepiness and, to his surprise, there was a tiny smile dancing on his lips. For some reason that made him smile more, quizzically, as he compared how he’d expected to feel to how he felt now and found that, for one of the few times in his life, everything had turned out apparently completely fine.

He went out and dropped the blinds over the window, shrouding the room in shadows. Then he went and found three blankets—one for Dean and two for him, because there was no way he was lying his clean body on those dirty sheets.

Brows furrowed in his sleep, Dean dug himself into the thick blanket. Sitting beside him on a second one, Sam reached out and felt his forehead, checking his temperature. His brother’s skin was much cooler than it had been for the last two days, and there was color to it again.

He breathed a soft sigh of relief and winced slightly at the soreness when he shuffled down under his top blanket. Right arm spread over him and the left resting on his chest, Sam blearily turned his head to face Dean. He wasn’t sure how long he watched his big brother sleep, because in what felt like the next heartbeat, he was asleep too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s one thing I would feel better about adding here, given everything going on in the fandom recently: I totally understand that Jensen didn’t actually play Dean as bisexual/gay/etc. My understanding is that he played Dean as straight. So this fic is just supposed to be kind of a slight AU in that area, and is NOT intended to undermine the established canon. I just wanted to make that clear as we continue, out of respect for Jensen because I genuinely love him and Jared, and wouldn’t want to seem ignorant or dismissive of their intentions/desires.  
> I also wanted to say that, while I stated previously the updates will be every three or four days, I was told by someone who’s more qualified than I am that weekly updates are better, because it gives you guys time to read the new chapter without being rushed. So just count on every Tuesday night from now on! <3  
> Okay, now we can definitely continue. Thanks for taking a moment to read this note! I’m so excited to post the next chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's read and commented so far!! You guys have really brightened my week. <3

Sam awoke very slowly the next morning, after what felt like days of sleep. Without opening his eyes, he could tell the room was dark, but the unfamiliarity of the bed did not concern him until he felt a thick woolen blanket bunched uncomfortably under his thigh. His first thought was that no skeevy motel room had thick woolen blankets like this; his second thought was that neither did the bunker; his third thought hit him like a bullet to the brain.

_Dean._

He sat up and found the room was indeed dark, but fragments of early daylight slipped through the yellowing blinds. The bed beside him was empty and cold, so he threw off the blanket that was half-tangled around him. His first instinct was to rush out and hunt his brother down, but when he heard a small noise from the living room he stopped. Dean was there. Cas wouldn’t have picked him up anyway without warning Sam, and if his big brother hadn’t felt the need to wake him—er, _Alex_ —then all must be okay.

Sam did an about-face and went to the bathroom instead; as he brushed his teeth he saw that the shower curtain was wet and the faint scent of the soap lingered in the air. Dean had showered at least. That was a good sign. But when he finally entered the living room, his heart sank at what he saw.

“What are you doing?”

Dean did not stop shoving his clothes from yesterday into his ancient duffel, didn’t even look at Sam at all. The line of his shoulders was almost as tense as it had been the day before, but this time it wasn’t the curse doing it because his skin was dry and flushed, not sweaty or pale.

“I left you a note,” he said, tightly, “on the fridge. You weren’t supposed to wake up. Your timing sucks, Alex.”

 _Sucks_ was punctuated with the rough pull of the duffel’s rusted zipper.

“That doesn’t answer my question, Dean,” Sam told him unflinchingly.

His brother flung the duffel over his shoulder and finally looked at him. His eyes were so like himself again—bright green, open, and so full of guilt and self-loathing that Sam felt like they’d stepped back in time, to when Dean was more lost and homeless than now. Nevertheless, his expression was staunch as ever when he spoke with his distinct conciseness.

“Alex, I’m sorry for making you a part of this. Really, I am. I hope someday Sam can make it right by you.”

With that abrupt farewell, he tried to make for the front door, but Sam stepped in his way with a hand on his chest.

“You can’t leave, Dean,” he said, composed but adamant. “A week, that’s the shortest amount of time you have until this curse wears off. It’ll probably be closer to three, maybe even five. If you leave now, it’ll flare up again within a day and you’ll be right back where you were. Why would you do that?”

He half-expected the flash of rebellious eyes, but Dean was refusing to meet his gaze altogether now. He readjusted his duffel strap and replied in a low voice.

“I won’t do it again.”

“Yes, you _will_ , Dean. Look, I don’t know if this is some macho thing for you; I know you would have preferred a woman, and I know you don’t normally stay more than the night, but if you think you can just hold it off until it goes away, you’re _wrong_. It doesn’t work like that. Castiel said—”

“It’s not about any of that, Alex,” Dean barked, an unexpected show of emotion.

Sam stopped, evaluating his brother’s downturned face.

“Then what?”

Dean took a step backwards, and Sam realized after a heartbeat that he was staring down deliberately, at Sam’s left wrist. The younger brother was surprised to find deep bruises there in the shape of fingers; he hadn’t even felt them until now, or seen them, hidden under his too-long pajama sleeves. A similar pattern mottled his other wrist, though not quite as bad. Both were swollen, though, and now that he was checking, one might have been just slightly sprained. The night before flashed through his mind, memories of Dean’s hands holding him down, the memory of his own longing when they weren’t anymore.

Understanding flooded him.

“Dean,” he almost chuckled, “this—this is nothing. Going by the other victims, I was expecting open wounds and broken bones. And it was my fault too; I tried getting away from you. I knew better than that. I knew how the curse would probably react. You can’t blame yourself for this. Compared to the other guys, man, you were a saint.”

Dean was shaking his head, and beyond his frustration, Sam felt a backward sort of pride for his brother’s understated but overactive sense of chivalry.

“This was exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” he said. “Cas, and Sam, and _you_ —I shouldn’t have let any of you talk me into this. I knew it was a bad move.”

“It wasn’t a bad move, Dean,” Sam countered vehemently. “You said yourself, you had to live, to fight. This was the best way, probably the _only_ way, and you know that.”

“You said you could handle it,” Dean’s voice was seething with anger Sam knew wasn’t directed at Alex at all.

“I _did_ handle it. I’m fine, Dean. I didn’t even notice these marks until you said something. And now you’re on the way to getting better; it won’t be like that again, I don’t think. You’re already looking a lot more in control of yourself than you were. You won’t have to worry about losing it and hurting me again. I don’t regret anything.”

That fact still surprised him, but it was true nevertheless.

“Yeah? Well, you must be some kind of masochistic whackjob. I guess the Life hits everybody different. Go ahead and keep it in your fondest memories if that’s what lights your fire, because it’s not going to happen again.”

He tried circling Sam, but the younger man stepped over, blocked him for the second time, and tried switching tactics.

“Dean, if you go now, then what was the point?” he asked. “If you leave, and you die, then what was the use of any of it? You said you were doing this for your brother, right? Because he needs you and you don't want to leave him fighting alone? What will _he_ do?”

“He got by without me before, several times. He can do it again. In fact, it feels like it gets easier for him each time, so…that’s that.”

Sam hid a flinch of pressure on an old wound. No matter how sick and lost and alone and out of his mind he’d been, he never, ever should have left Dean in Purgatory. He never should’ve allowed his mind to snap like that, to drag him into a life he didn’t even truly want, away from the one person he truly did love more than anyone else. He wasn’t himself in that time; looking back, he knew that now. He was never himself when Dean was gone. He felt that more deeply than even Dean did. It was too late to go back and sucker punch some sense into himself, though. All he could do was try to clean up his messes after he made them.

“You think so?” he retorted. “Because that doesn’t sound like the guy I talked to. Sam was desperate to find you help. He would have given anything, paid anything, to save you. If you really think he’ll be all right without you, then something’s got you more messed up than some stupid curse, because I…I’ve barely met the guy and even I know that’s not true.”

Dean’s jaw clenched, and when they locked eyes, his were cold and hard as ice.

“You don’t know how it’ll be next time,” he said. “You told me I wouldn’t hurt you, and I did, so what do you know? I’m in control now, yeah, but this curse is going to rear its ugly head again in just a few hours. I can feel it, building up in my blood. It could be just as bad, or worse, tonight. I’m not risking it, Alex. I won’t do it. So you can either get out of my way, or I’ll just call my angel to come right in here and zap me out from in front of you.”

“No,” Sam stated unconditionally. “If you’re leaving, Dean, then you’re going to do one thing for me. You say you’re in control now. Fine. Then prove that you think last night was wrong.”

“What?” came the confused, impatient, response.

“You heard me,” replied Sam, cocking his head. “Prove it. If you really feel like you hurt me and that’s something you regret, then are you really going to go and make that my only memory of you? Show me what sex with you is _supposed_ to be before you go. If you really believe you harmed me as much as you say, you should want to show me who you really are, right? Because you’re not someone who hurts somebody else willingly; I know that much. So if you’re good with it, I want it too. Show me.”

The confusion had bled into every one of Dean’s weary features. His mouth tightened and his eyes narrowed, as though trying to understand the workings of Alex O’Brady’s depraved mind.

 _Good luck with that,_ Sam thought.

“I want it,” he said again, never breaking their connection even to blink. "If you do too, then please, stay, just for a while, just one more time...because the only way I'm going to let you go without a fight is if you look me in the eye and tell me _you_ don't want this."

After several ticks of a noisy nearby clock, Dean’s gaze slipped off of Sam’s face to the carpet, his expression a mask of contemplation while his eyes turned into pools of shame again. Finally, it seemed that he made his decision, and the duffel fell to the floor. Sam frowned at the unreadable look on his face, and then Dean answered, quiet and undemanding, sounding more like another apology than anything.

“Sit on the couch.”

Sam didn’t move for a long moment, but then he obeyed, watching carefully to ensure Dean didn’t try to grab his duffel and run as soon as Sam was out of his way.

But the older Winchester brother just watched with a tired but determined look, and didn’t move himself until Sam was settled in the middle of the long sofa. He edged the coffee table back several feet with his foot, and then put a warm hand on the back of Sam’s neck. Sam obligingly let him tilt his head back, and the kiss that Dean planted on his mouth resembled their first from yesterday—soft, tentative, and full of apology. He didn’t try to touch Sam anywhere else, though, and Sam followed his lead and stayed where he was.

He was a little unnerved when Dean moved back again and began to undress himself, so slowly and with such focus that Sam would have believed he was trying to put on a subtle strip show if he didn’t look so damn miserable doing it. The lighting was better in here, for sure, and unlike last night Dean didn’t seem to be in any hurry, so Sam allowed himself to take in the sight he couldn’t before.

He couldn’t begin to count the number of times he’d seen his brother shirtless—after a shower, getting dressed, or in the summer when a cheap motel room didn’t have working air conditioning. But in all those times he’d never felt the desire to drink in the familiar cut of his brother’s shoulders, or the smooth skin of his chest with all its crisscrossed scars shining in the pale sunshine as he moved. He’d looked skinny yesterday, but today he was healthier again and his muscles shifted temptingly beneath his skin; Sam tried to remember a time when Dean hadn’t been rugged and muscular. But he could only remember ever staring in secret pride at the big brother who could protect him from anything without needing a weapon, ever since he was a toddler.

Had he thought Dean was beautiful, back then? He couldn’t remember thinking so, consciously. He did now. In a way it was like he was seeing him for the first time. It was so, so damn weird.

He was appreciative of the time Dean was taking on his task. Without realizing it, he licked his lips as his eyes followed the movements of his brother’s fingers undoing his jeans. Dean shimmied down the old denim and his boxers, stepping out of both one careful foot at a time.

Sam swallowed at the sight of Dean’s cock, an intrusive flash reminding him how it had felt sliding in and out of him. Even though it was soft now, it was still thick and long, as stupidly perfect as the rest of him. It made Sam feel filthy just looking at it. His eyes moved up over the body he knew so well, up to Dean’s face; he realized that the other man had been watching him stare this whole time with an unreadable expression.

Then Dean took a step forward and dropped down to his knees in front of him, between his legs. Insistent hands tugged on his soft shirt, pulling him down so that their lips could meet; it wasn’t rough, though. Instead, Dean’s mouth was light, almost tender. The backs of his hands caressed downward, skimming over his shirt to his waist; he recognized what Dean intended, and willingly raised his hands so that he could tug the shirt off. The only remaining obstacle was Sam’s pajama pants, which were slightly trickier as he lifted himself up, never breaking their kiss.

Once they were both completely naked, Dean pulled back only to plant a trail of kisses from under Sam’s ear to his sternum while his fingers massaged Sam’s thighs. Releasing one, he flattened his palm against Sam’s chest and pushed him so that the taller man was resting back against the sofa’s slumping cushion. As his kisses continued across Sam’s tensed abs, Dean stretched himself over him, allowing his own torso to trap the other’s hardening cock between their bodies. His suckling kisses progressed and he rocked himself back and forth, creating just enough friction to get Sam’s cock hard. Meanwhile, his hands drifted all over—up Sam’s sides, down his front, around and under his thighs, up to his shoulders—creating a flowing rhythm that make the younger man’s skin tremble.

Sam tilted his head back, sighing deeply almost without meaning to. How long had it been since he’d actually felt someone touching him like this? Dean had always been a multitalented prodigy in a lot of ways, and it seemed sex was another area of expertise with him, as natural as engines or weapons. Where the night before he had been all rough power even apart from the curse, this morning he was all soft reverence.

Then his older brother sidled up to reach his nipple; locking his lips around it, he licked and sucked jolts of pleasure that made Sam squirm. The younger Winchester’s hips bounced reflexively when one of Dean’s friction-warm hands took his dick in a firm grip and pulled and squeezed in a slow, paced-out tempo.

Sam closed his eyes. He couldn’t help it; half of him wanted to tell Dean to speed up, while he other half wanted to drift back off to sleep. He’d never felt that before during sex, either.

He did nothing; he didn’t move or speak, just sat perfectly still when Dean moved to the other nipple, then down his stomach, then to his hips, kissing and kissing and all the while never releasing his dick. So captivated, he didn’t even think about where Dean was going until a wet mouth closed around the tip of his cock and sucked.

“ _Dean_!” he hissed in surprise at the intensity of it, pushing himself up with his elbows.

He was totally, utterly unprepared for the sight of Dean’s wide, pink mouth stretched around his cock, his smooth pale skin sprinkled with freckles and stubble, the green of his eyes sparkling up in the morning light streaming in through the window.

With a low groan he fell back, and Dean didn’t waste a second to take him all the way to the base. Sam wasn’t exactly tiny himself, and his brother made a garbled choking sound around it which Sam _felt_ all the way to his fingertips and toes. Before he could recover from that, Dean was pulling off again, fisting Sam’s cock, and tilting his head to lick all the way down one side, then licking back up to the tip and doing the same to the other side. His lips were soft but sure as they kissed at the wetness gathering at Sam’s slit and his other hand was warm where it cupped his sac.

Sam cursed, loudly, and his hands scrambled blindly—one down to Dean’s head, pushing his mouth down further, and the other to clutch at his own hair as he arched.

Dean made a muffled humming noise which Sam thought at first might be protest, but then he was reaching up to adjust Sam’s hand on the back of his head more effectively. Sam grasped at the strands of soft hair and pushed gently so that Dean swallowed more of him, then released the pressure so Dean would move back up again.

His brother followed his guidance like he was trained to do it, sucking and licking with the thrusts until Sam’s cock was coated in hot saliva. After a while, Sam wondered how long it had been and how Dean could possibly still be going, but he wasn’t going to argue. Instead, he mindlessly rambled off every encouragement and praise his addled brain could think up.

“…You’re doing it so, so good. Come on, a little faster. You’re amazing, seriously…”

Dean shifted on his knees so he could reach Sam’s dick more comfortably, going with it when Sam finally lost control and shoved himself to the back of his throat, seeking more. The older man grunted, a deep, rumbling noise, and pulled off with a _pop_.

“Y’like it, sweetheart?”

The half-teasing term of endearment was so oddly comforting Sam sat up, and even though it wasn’t as big of a shock the second time, it still made him arch and run his hands roughly through his own hair to ground himself when he saw Dean’s tongue flatten to lap at the pearly drop gathering at the tip as he fisted the base. He couldn't remember the last time he was so tightly-wound, and those _eyes_ —his brother’s eyes—were seeing it all.

“Dean,” he gasped, almost a sob, leaning back again and running his hands down his own face mindlessly, “I’m gonna—”

Dean dropped his head back down, taking him all the way again before pulling off almost completely, three quick times in succession, and _noises_ it made….Sam scratched at his shoulder and tried to pry him off.

“Dean, I’m gonna come—”

But Dean just grasped his hand where it clawed at him and squeezed it; his thumb rubbed a soothing circle along his knuckles, a tender gesture compared to the relentlessness of his sucking, and Sam couldn’t handle it anymore. Intertwining his fingers with his brother’s, he came with his eyes closed, feeling his dick pulse and throb in Dean’s hot mouth.

It didn’t quite hit him until a minute later, as he caught his breath in the quiet of the room, that his brother had _swallowed_.

He forced his eyes open as the couch dipped beside him, and met the expectant pair watching him in silence.

“Where the _hell_ ,” he said, louder than he meant, “did you learn how to do that?”

If Dean hadn’t still looked so shaken, Sam was certain he would have boasted in his skillset; the pride at Sam's heartfelt wonder made one corner of his red mouth quirk up just slightly.

Sam’s eyes ran over his brother’s totally bare body, and he reached to pull him closer when he saw he was half-hard.

But Dean was quick, his hand snapping up to grab Sam’s arm (above his bruised wrists) before he could touch him. Sam didn’t try to fight but responded with a worried look, and Dean’s answer was measured and somehow a little shy.

“That’s not what this was about. It was about you, not me.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, “and you’ve proven my point, Dean. It was the curse that hurt me, not you. You took care of me; now it’s time for me to take care of you.”

He tried to reach out again, but Dean held his arm fast.

“I don’t want that.”

Sam could see that his brother meant it. Sighing, he pushed himself up so their eyes met evenly, aware of the chilliness of the room on his embarrassingly bare body. He started to lean forward to grab his clothes off the floor, but Dean was making no move to dress and somehow he felt they should be on the same level. He had never known this side of Dean before, and it was going to take a little maneuvering to learn exactly how to deal with him.

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Dean,” he told him quietly.

“That doesn’t look _wrong_ to you?”

Sam looked down to where his brother gestured, and although they were pretty dark and ugly and swollen, he would admit, the bruises around his wrist seemed even more inconsequential now.

“Dean, I would hardly even have noticed. You’re the one blowing this up. It’s not worth it, okay? You need to stay. You _have_ to stay. You said so yourself.”

Acting on instinct, he raised one of the offending hands and carded his fingers through Dean’s sandy hair. It didn’t escape his notice that Dean’s face went from shadowed and distrustful to soft at the touch, and Sam experimentally stroked along the line of his jaw until his thumb was lingering on Dean’s chin. Dean swallowed and looked down but didn’t turn his head away, and Sam caressed the pad of his thumb across the slightly parted lips, feeling a ghosting breath. Then he replaced his thumb with his own lips, and he was almost sure he tasted himself on Dean’s tongue.

Speaking of which, there had been one thing other than the lube that he’d made sure to tell Cas they would need.

“I have bacon for breakfast,” he tempted when they pulled apart. “It’s that Black Label brand, the maple flavor.”

A huff of laughter swept over Sam’s face, and Dean opened his eyes where they had drifted closed.

“That’s my favorite. How did you know that?”

Sam shrugged.

“Your brother mentioned it might help you feel more at home, while we were talking,” he said offhandedly, then he added with murmured seriousness, his hand still lightly touching Dean’s cheek, “He’s who you’re doing this for, right? I really believe he wouldn’t be okay without you, Dean.”

The telltale flinch actually eased Sam’s mind.

“You already knew that,” he said. “You know that he needs you. You said you couldn’t leave him, right?”

The jaw under his fingers flexed, a torn look filling Dean’s eyes; then he took Sam’s hand in his own and lowered it between them, but surprisingly didn’t let it go. He stared at it for another long, hard minute, and then—

“We’ll give this one more try. But tonight, if I start feeling like I’m not in control at any point, I’m calling the angel, and that’s the end of it. I won’t have a repeat of last night. You understand me?”

“Okay. Yeah, deal,” Sam conceded, knowing this was the best he could expect to get.

Dean leaned over and grabbed his clothes from off the rug, and Sam still felt odd about coming when the other man hadn’t, but he didn’t dare protest. Instead he followed Dean’s lead and put on his own clothes again, and a few minutes later they were tossing the maple bacon in a pan.

+++++++

Sam had never been much of a cook, and they hadn’t exactly had a fortune for groceries growing up…or a kitchen, usually. Of course, back then they hadn’t had an angel to fill up their fridge, either.

“What the hell, Cas?” he found himself whispering at the fourth tub of margarine crowding the refrigerator shelf.

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing.”

He grabbed the gallon of milk and faced his brother, who looked strangely at ease pushing the sizzling bacon around in the pan on the ancient stovetop.

“Pour some of that in there,” Dean instructed him, gesturing at the larger pan on the back burner.

“How much?” Sam asked, cluelessly. 

Dean gave him a slightly disbelieving look, and he felt like a kid asking a dumb question. His older brother cooked as much as he liked back at the bunker but had never asked for Sam’s help before, Jess had burned everything she tried to make, and Amelia hadn’t really been much of a homemaker all things considered. . .Sam had no idea what he was doing.

“You live alone and you have all this food, but you don’t know how to scramble some eggs? Here, just—just give it to me, before you spill it.”

They’d only been in here for ten minutes and already Dean was acting like his old self. All the instability of the last few days had taken its toll and it was obviously doing him good to be back in charge of something he knew. He poured in the milk and then the whipped eggs, and handed a large spoon to Sam.

“Stir that so it doesn’t burn, okay? Can you manage that?”

Sam frowned disgruntledly, and worked to be the best damn stirrer of scrambled eggs anyone had ever seen.

They stood side-by-side at the stove, and Sam had flashes of childhood, for sure, but more from when Dean had been going to hell and insisted on teaching him the basics of the Impala’s engine. This felt a lot nicer, and smelled better, too.

When the eggs and bacon were done, they set everything out on the table and Dean—shockingly—refused to let them drink beer and instead poured them both glasses of orange juice.

“This is amazing,” Sam complimented, and because he was still struggling with how to talk to his brother without _talking to his brother_ , he added, “Where’d you learn how to cook like this?”

Dean shrugged and shoveled another forkful of eggs into his mouth.

“Just a natural talent, I guess,” he said with joking smugness.

“Yeah, you seem to have a lot of those.”

 _That I didn’t know about,_ Sam added mentally. 

Dean stopped chewing and looked up, and there it was—that odd but endearing shy look.

“I lived with a woman for a while who had a lot of cookbooks, actually,” he said sincerely, after another bite. “I like working with my hands.”

“Yeah, I got that too.”

And there it was—a rare, genuine, honest-to-God amused smile, and Sam couldn’t help but smile back.

“So this woman,” Sam pushed, because he couldn’t often get away with asking Dean sensitive questions and he was taking advantage of it while it lasted, “was she somebody special to you?”

“Yeah—Lisa, she was,” Dean answered, with a trance of haunted memory, but then he shook it off and ate another bite. “I wasn’t there long, though, and I did more harm than good in a lot of ways, anyway.”

“What made you leave?”

“Sam.”

The younger Winchester couldn’t remember it clearly, having been soulless at the time, but of course it had been that. They were always each other’s reasons for leaving everything else behind.

“I don’t know how much you know about us,” Dean was saying. “I know there are a lot of rumors floating around out there, but…Sam was gone for about a year, several years ago now.”

Sam cleared his throat and drank a swig of juice.

“In Hell, right?” he said casually. “I’ve, uh, heard that rumor.”

“Yeah.”

There it was again, the haunted look, but this time it was even stronger than at the mention of Lisa, and Dean stared off into space for a second before continuing.

“I was in rough shape pretty much until he came back, and Lisa and her son, Ben, they—well, they took me in. I owe them a lot better than what they got from me.”

Then he seemed to come to his senses and took a gulp of the juice with an off smile that crinkled around his eyes.

“Why am telling you this for, man? This is my own personal junkpile, not yours. It’s not your job to sit and listen to my whiny sob stories, with as much as you’re doing already.”

Sam narrowed his eyes, never quite getting used to how Dean still, even now, seemed to undervalue himself far too often. He'd never understood that about his brother, who in his eyes had always been more valuable than a thousand other noble men combined, but he'd given up long ago of trying to convince Dean of his worth with words. All he could do was show him--love him, really, and hope that would somehow be enough.

“I don’t mind,” he said, sincerely. “We’ve got to do something to fill the time, right? I mean, besides the obvious….You know, the reason why…you’re here….”

He swallowed anymore of that sentence that might threaten to come out, and took another bite of bacon.

“Real smooth there, man.”

Dean’s teasing was something he could definitely handle, and he chuckled at himself along with him. On his best day he would never be as smooth as Dean, that was for sure; he wondered sometimes how he’d managed to start the few relationships he’d scored. Then he wondered why he was comparing this to his other relationships.

“You gonna eat that?”

That was more familiar ground too, and he didn’t protest when Dean swiped some of the cooling egg from his plate.

+++++++

They spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon watching TV, Dean flipping aimlessly through the channels. It was strange and rare for them to have nothing better to do—always some crazy new world-ending scheme to overthrow, or at the very least, some newspaper article or online story to get their attention for a hunt. But sprawled across the old sofa, listening to Dean gripe over the ridiculous number of medication commercials—those were familiar feelings too. They talked a little about nothing important, just a few more questions from Dean about “Alex’s” life and background (which Sam managed to answer believably). It almost escaped Sam’s notice that Dean scooted his recliner just slightly closer to the couch when he came back to hand him a beer from the kitchen.

They made dinner, during which Dean checked his phone several times with a frown. When Sam asked, he could’ve kicked himself for forgetting—Dean didn’t know it was him here; his big brother thought he was on a hunt. He waited a few more minutes and then went to the bathroom, where he texted Dean’s number with a reassurance and a warning that he and Hascal were going up into the mountains and might not have a signal for a few days.

He waited until Dean replied with a reassurance of his own wellbeing and an admonishment to stay safe, and then went back into the kitchen to eat the pork and seasoned rice his brother had thrown together. Weirdly and maybe nonsensically, he found himself glad that he _was_ here and not on a hunt, because he knew he would’ve been worried beyond belief about his brother—and he would’ve missed out on the delicious food.

+++++++

When the time finally came for them to go to bed, Sam insisted on changing the sheets first, to which Dean readily complied and quickly fled to the bathroom to change. Sam was thoughtful as he tossed the dirty sheets into the tiny laundry room, because he’d seen Dean getting paler and sweatier all evening. He prayed to whoever might be listening that it wouldn’t be as bad tonight, for Dean’s sake.

In the end, he was pretty sure they were both surprised in the best way. Dean, despite his trembling as the curse turned his eyes strange again, spread him open to be taken with infinite patience, careful not to hurt his sore body, holding Sam's wrists lightly in one hand and pressing tiny kisses of apology to the marks he'd left. Sam, for his part, stayed as pliant and gentle and accepting as he possibly could, as much as he knew Dean needed, even whispering it into the darkness when he felt his brother starting to lose control of himself a couple of times. Dean never lost it completely, though, always coming back from the edge of the curse to the sound of Sam's soothing, and there was something in the way the older man looked at him, even in the dark, even past the unnaturalness of his eyes, that made Sam feel something he couldn't quite grasp enough to name. He could _feel_ Dean regarding him with some sort of great awe or affection, like he was some kind of a miracle the older Winchester had never seen coming, like Dean was lucky and he knew it for having this man in bed with him.

Sam had always considered himself the lucky one, all things considered, for having Dean in his life. But he was aware enough these days to realize all the ways Dean felt the same about him, and this felt a lot like that, he realized. And of course it did—because Alex was doing exactly what Sam would do, exactly what Sam _was doing_. He was giving Dean all he had to give, and Dean knew that, could feel it, just like he knew it with Sam in their every day life together. The warmth of Dean's gratitude was like a lighter setting him on fire, making him want nothing but to return it with everything he could, so that's exactly what he did, allowing Dean to take whatever he needed while whispering those assurances without any hesitation or fear. He let those fever-hot hands maneuver him wherever they would, opened his mouth up and let that expert tongue lick inside like it was claiming him, and he didn't feel a single flicker of that numb horror he'd expected to feel in the beginning. All he felt was Dean, and though he still had an awful twist in his gut at the deception, he couldn't feel any regret for himself, not when it felt like _this_.

While Dean was three fingers in to the knuckle, he leaned down, combed Sam’s hair out of his sweaty face, and whispered gruffly with his slitted eyes boring down into the younger man's,

“Tomorrow, you’re gonna do this to me on your couch, you hearin’ me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a shorter chapter than the last one, but be prepared because next week's chapter is actually a little bit of a case!fic--the boys go to a haunted hotel and manage to turn yet another ordinary case into a near-death experience. x) See you then!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the parts of this story that I really enjoyed a lot, because the case!fic portion was just so much fun to write! I made me realize why the writers of Supernatural probably loved their job. x) Many thanks again to everyone who commented and left kudos on the last chapter! You have no idea how encouraged I am every time I get a comment in my email. <3

The next morning came, and it was much easier than the last one because Dean was in the best mood he’d seen in weeks. Sam made the toast and Dean surprised him again by making experimental omelettes out of random vegetables and spices, which ended up being amazing, of course.

They didn’t talk about the night before, about how much better it had been and how Dean clearly wasn’t making any moves to leave today, or about any of the strange and almost ethereal feelings they’d shared in the dark. Instead they joked about why Dean was making everything, including the toast, next time (because Sam had managed to burn it).

“So,” Dean said at length, “is there anything to do around here? Obviously this is the middle of freakin’ nowhere, but what do you do for fun, when you’re not hunting, I mean?”

Thankfully Sam had glanced at a map of the area, and he offered the first thing that came to his mind.

“There’s a lake,” he said, “not too far from here, on the other side of the hill. That’s pretty much it, unless you want to go bowling.”

“Yeah, not really a fan of foot disease,” Dean replied, downing the last of his juice. “Okay, the lake it is, then. But first—”

Sam paused where he'd stood up from the table to gather the dishes, because Dean’s tone had turned suddenly mischievous, complemented by that cheesy little half-smile he’d always tossed around since he’d been a charming and rebellious green-eyed kid.

“—I made you a promise last night. That couch, your fingers, my ass—what d’ya say, Alex?”

Sam could feel himself blushing.

“There’s, uh, something I should probably tell you,” he admitted sheepishly. “This is sort of embarrassing, but, uh, I’ve never—I mean, I don’t know exactly how to, you know, do that—at least, not as well as _you_ obviously do.”

It took Dean a moment to process, but when he did, his wide eyes locked on Sam’s and his mouth fell open just a fraction before he spoke.

“Wait,” he said, holding up both hands, “you mean you’ve never been _on top_ of the situation? Don’t get me wrong; you are a _fantastic_ bottom—seriously, dude, awesome—but you don’t give off the submissive vibe like a full-time bottom would.”

Sam, despite how he knew he was blushing, couldn’t fight the bewildered smile dancing on his lips. Who knew Dean’s gay senses were so highly developed.

“Yeah, no,” he replied, not daring to look up in his sudden bashfulness, “actually, I’m neither—or at least, I wasn’t, until…”

He trailed off, and waited patiently again for his brother to fill in the blanks. He could practically sense it when the other man realized in an abrupt moment what he was implying.

“So, you’re telling me,” Dean said slowly at last, “that you’ve never been with a guy before me? Are you kidding me, man?”

“No, not kidding. You were definitely the first.”

“So that crapfest you went through our first night, that was your first experience with a man, ever?”

_That_ certainly hadn’t been what Sam was expecting, but he probably should have been, knowing Dean. His big brother still wasn’t looking at the bruises on Sam’s wrists without a clouded, guilty frown.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a crapfest, Dean,” he answered assuredly. “Truth is, this whole thing has kind of been a rollercoaster; you’ve been feeling that way too, I’m sure. But it’s been a lot…better than I could’ve imagined, that first night included.”

That tiny wrinkle was still there between Deans’ brows, so Sam switched tactics to put them back on point.

“I wouldn’t even mention it, but I just thought you should probably know, just in case I do something wrong, or something. I’m a fast learner, I think, but definitely not experienced.”

“I don’t understand,” Dean said, the slight frown growing. “Help me out here, man. I mean, surely if you were into guys you would have known by now. You’re, what, thirty-three, thirty-four?”

“Uh, thirty-five, actually.”

“Huh. Same age as Sammy.”

Sam’s eyes widened a fraction, but Dean didn’t notice and picked up volume again.

“You’re thirty-five and you’ve never had sex with a man before, but you decide to make _this_ your first step out of the closet? Holy crap, dude, I was right about you; you are some kind of a psycho. Why the hell would you do that?”

What good answer did he have? He could only get as close to the truth as possible and hope that would make up for all he was hiding.

“I don’t know, man, I just—I heard it was you, you know, the famous Dean Winchester, and I said yes.”

But that wasn’t good enough for Dean, who stood up from the table with even more of a frown than before.

“But why?” he pushed. “What difference does it make who I am?”

Sam had to think about that for a moment, because the only answers shooting through his head were along the lines of, _Because I’ve said goodbye to you too many times and it just gets harder every time and I don’t want to have to live through it again._ Finally the correct phrasing formed in his mind and he spoke carefully but as sincerely as possible, given all that he couldn’t actually say.

“Because it’s like you said, there are rumors. I wouldn’t even call them that. They’re more like legends, about you and your brother. Some of them might be lies, but I’ve seen the good you’ve done, and I’ve heard all the stories about what you’ve sacrificed for the whole world, and I believed them. I believed _in you_ , Dean, when those leviathan were crawling the earth, when the angels fell, all of it; I held onto what I knew about you and I believed that somehow you could find a way to save us. And the world’s still spinning and the clock’s still ticking, so I guess I was right to believe.”

Maybe it was a little too much too soon from a practical stranger, but the stunned, open-mouthed look on Dean’s face wasn’t disgust or discomfort; it was something else completely.

“I said yes,” Sam continued, bolstered by that look and wanting, as always, to give Dean all the praise he deserved, “because why wouldn’t I? After all the good you’ve done, you deserve to be helped when you need it. Plus, I wanted to meet the guy who told archangels to suck it, more than once.”

Dean took another short moment to close his mouth, but his eyes were still wide and startled. Then, in a sudden flash, he gripped Sam’s arm in one hand and cupped his jaw in the other, and planted a simple but lengthy kiss on his mouth. Sam found his hands automatically going around him, like they always had any time Dean had ever reached for him, and he just allowed himself to sink into the kiss without thinking about it.

“I need you to know, for the record,” the older Winchester breathed hotly against Sam’s lips, “that it’s not very often I’m on the receiving end of things, but I swear I’m going to ride you so hard, you’re gonna forget your name.”

+++++++

Sam remembered his name was supposed to be _Alex_ all throughout them tearing their clothes off each other, and when they crashed through the bedroom door and Dean landed with his back on the mattress and Sam overtop him, and even when Dean guided two of Sam’s slicked-up fingers into his tight, warm hole…but he forgot he was faking an alias entirely when Dean sank down onto his cock, one hand holding himself open while the other was flat against Sam’s chest for stability.

“Oh, D-Dean,” he stammered out without meaning to, hands scrambling to rub over his brother’s chest and arms and thighs, anything he could touch.

“Yeah, baby,” acknowledged the older man with a tinge of a smirk, his own eyes slipping closed as he took Sam all the way inside.

Sam's palms slid over the light, sparse hair on Dean’s thighs, feeling the twitch of the strong muscles there as the other man settled, back straight and hands resting on Sam’s abdomen. He was tight, that was for damn sure, and for a moment Sam worried he might be _too_ tight, but the tiny wrinkle of discomfort faded from Dean’s brow after a few seconds and he moved, just barely—more a twitch than anything. But it was enough to send a wave of pleasure shooting through Sam’s body all the way to his chest; it had been a long time since he’d been inside anyone, and never anyone like _this_. Unable to stop it, he canted his hips upward slightly.

“Whoa, easy there, tiger,” came his brother’s voice, light and playful and full of warmth, “I gotcha. Don’t you worry. I’m gonna take good care of you. Just gotta give me a minute to do it right. Like I said, it’s not very often I’m the one taking, and you’re a pretty good-sized boy.”

Sam couldn’t help but huff on a laugh, and he fumbled aimlessly with the pillow beside him as he willfully forced himself to relax. If there was one thing he knew for sure, it’s that when Dean promised to take care of him, he always did his dead-level best to keep that promise. And if his _taking_ was anything like his _giving_ , it was going to be worth the wait.

After only another few seconds, Dean adjusted his hands to Sam’s chest and slowly raised his hips.

Sam groaned, his legs sliding over the soft sheets. Dean pushed his heels under Sam’s thighs to ground himself better in the mattress, and picked up speed with his thrusts. Sam moaned loudly when Dean added a roll of his hips to the increasing pace, along with a deliberate tightening of his insides that left Sam’s cock twitching.

“ _Ugh_ , yes. Faster, please, _Dean_.”

At his request, his brother stopped abruptly—of course he did, damn it—and when Sam looked up into his face, he was smiling a half-smug, half-affectionate grin. He leaned backward a little, changing the angle where Sam was stretching him out, and squirmed out a deliberate little non-rhythm.

Sam, overcome with the pricks of intense pleasure that produced, pushed his shoulders against the pillow under him and inhaled a shuddering breath. He reached out and grabbed at Dean’s chest, enjoying the feel of the strength of tensed muscles there. Dean leaned forward again, allowing Sam easier access to his skin, and moved slow and easy.

“I gotta hand it to you, Alex,” he panted, “for a straight guy, you’re really getting the hang of this whole gay sex thing.”

“Just shut up and ride me,” he shot back, but it came out almost like begging, any little snark he might’ve had washed away when Dean gently palmed his hair out of his eyes.

“See? I knew you weren’t a die-hard bottom; you got some of that alpha in you after all.”

But despite his jokes, Dean obeyed—better than that, he went harder and deeper and faster. The whole frame of the bed creaked under them, and the headboard slammed on the wall with enough force that, if he hadn’t been so overcome, Sam would have been concerned for the plaster. Dean apparently had no such concerns, though, fulfilling his promise like only he could, as he tried all sorts of different moves the younger man hadn't even known were possible; but with every little shift and minute adjustment of Dean's body above him, with every slight change to the pace and position, different sensations flooded Sam's nerves until he was a panting, writhing mess, getting increasingly desperate to come while his cock was being stroked relentlessly by Dean's hot, lube-slicked insides.

When Dean shifted again and the new position made his own cock slap against Sam’s stomach with each thrust, the younger man got hold of himself enough to reach out. The harsh growl of satisfaction that ripped out of Dean was reward enough, but his big brother (whose libido was apparently limitless) also decided to pace his own movements with Sam’s hard, fast strokes.

Sam held back his own orgasm, remembering that first night (had it only been two days ago?), when even in the middle of the curse’s effects, Dean had managed to wait until Sam had come first. Determinedly, he pumped the dick in his fist until Dean’s movements became jagged and irregular, and then his brother suddenly froze and gently pushed his hand away to milk himself through his orgasm.

Sam would probably have come too, from the spasms of Dean’s body and the feel of hot come on his skin if nothing else, except that he was distracted by the look on his brother’s face. He hadn’t seen him come yet, Dean having taken him from behind each time, and he was momentarily stunned by it in a way he never would have anticipated. They’d been through hell, literally, and Sam had seen his face twist into a lot of different expressions, but somehow he felt like this look—this utterly blissed-out look that made Dean’s green eyes flutter closed and his jaw go slack and his pretty mouth fall open around a low, long, quiet groan…just one look like this wiped away at least two of the awful negative expressions he’d seen darken his brother’s face over the years. 

And he’d been the one to put it there. Of all the pain that had crossed Dean’s face because of him and his mistakes, he’d also created _this_ , now. He’d done right by Dean too, of course—made him smile and laugh and brought plenty of other positive things into his world, maybe even mostly positive things—but this was the best one of all. This made him feel like he’d actually given Dean something purely _good_ , something euphoric, just like he deserved.

Luckily his brother had finished, leaving long spurts of come across Sam’s chest and stomach, because Sam couldn’t stop himself from suddenly surging up and pulling him into a violent but careful kiss.

Dean grunted in surprise, but kissed him back with equal fervency, his own cock still jerking against Sam’s stomach. Sam stroked his hands down scruff-peppered cheeks, and then wrapped his arms around him, pulling him down further so that his own still rock-hard cock slipped out of Dean’s hole with a slick little _pop_.

He didn’t really care about the loss of contact that much, though, just kept kissing Dean’s willing, smiling, mouth until he couldn’t handle the arousal anymore and rolled them both to put himself on top.

Dean, looking only faintly surprised at his sudden rush of dominance, beamed up at him and willingly angled his hips so that Sam could sink inside smoothly. The younger man didn’t stop kissing him, but took deep breaths in-between as he pounded with as much strength and passion as Dean had, loving the feel of the strong, scarred legs wrapping around him and hands gripping both sides of his face, Dean not trying to take control, just holding on as Sam _took_ him. The older Winchester looked almost high, relaxed completely from his own orgasm, his fingers toying with Sam’s longer hair as he kissed him back, a tiny smile curving his lips.

When he felt his orgasm hitting at last, Sam blindly reached up to seize one of those warm, familiar hands from his cheek. He pressed his face against Dean’s temple, shoved their linked hands down onto the pillow, twined their fingers together, and came.

+++++++

The lake was warm and silent and strangely perfect, tucked away in a little meadow surrounded by trees hundreds of years old. Sam hadn’t felt like a kid in years—decades, even—but he felt like he’d gone back in time to his earliest childhood memories, before he knew why their dad moved them around so much and why his big brother kept a gun under his pillow. Dean, who was apparently nothing short of delighted at Alex’s _“awesome”_ sexual enthusiasm, was in that mischievous mood that had always half-annoyed, half-amused Sam.

His first move on getting to the edge of the lake was to push Sam in, which Sam should’ve seen coming really so he couldn’t be mad about it. Dean didn’t know it was his brother he was up against, though, and Sam took advantage of his underestimating _Alex_. The array of curses that tumbled out of Dean’s lips before he actually hit the water too was the most entertaining thing he’d heard in a while, and Sam laughed as hard as he had as a teenager during their stupid prank wars.

They hadn’t brought lunch, but neither of them bothered mentioning it. They didn’t talk much at all, actually, not because they couldn’t think of anything to say, but more because they didn’t need to say anything. Offhandedly, Dean told him the story of the time in Wisconsin when he’d only just recently picked Sam up from Stanford and they’d investigated a child ghost who’d been drowned in a lake and was likewise killing his murderers—

“I’m telling you, man, never piss off a water ghost. You’d be surprised at how many different ways there are to drown.”

—and Sam pretended like it was the first time he’d ever heard the story. (1) He told a couple of stories of his own, from when Dean had been dead the first time and wouldn’t know. Dean complimented his hunting style with his usual approving nod and gruff, “Nice job.” They drank a couple of beers—which Dean _had_ remembered to bring, of course—and watched the sun go down over the rolling Virginian hills.

“You know, I’ve always liked it at the Blue Ridge Mountains,” Dean said after an hour of silence, swallowing down the last of the bottle.

Sam waited a second before replying.

“Yeah, me too.”

That night, Dean’s eyes still changed, but after he’d come inside Sam, he rolled over and let Sam do the same to him, gripping handfuls of his hair and kissing him breathless afterward.

+++++++

Over the next few days, they went into town a couple of times, and Sam worried each time that Dean would notice how nobody seemed to know him. But it was a commonality that hunters led separated lives, so Dean wouldn’t have thought twice even if he had noticed. His biggest problem was finding times to text Dean from his own phone, without Dean noticing that _Alex_ was sending messages at the same time he was getting them from Sam’s cell. Dean texted multiple times a day, but didn’t try to call Sam, which was surprising and made the younger brother wonder about whether or not he subconsciously recognized they were actually together. After all, they normally never went more than a few hours without hearing each other’s voices, and if it had been this long under normal circumstances, Sam was sure Dean would have needed to talk to him audibly by now. He made a mental note to talk to Cas about it later, just out of curiosity.

They ate at the little diner and shot pool at the bar, and Dean withstood from straight-out hustling anybody but still made an entertaining show out of winning wads of cash out of the locals. Sam shook his head as he drove them home in the rusty pickup that had come with the house, as his half-drunk partner chuckled in the passenger seat over his newfound wealth and punched Sam’s arm companionably.

Dean also complained endlessly about the draftiness of Alex’s house and resolved to fix every tiny detail he saw wrong with it, from the shingles to the shutters to the landscaping. It was around two and half weeks later that Sam started to notice some restlessness officially building in his eyes. He was frankly surprised it hadn’t hit his brother sooner, and had already been inwardly debating about what his move should be when it did. The curse wasn’t as violent anymore, that was for sure, but until Dean’s eyes stopped morphing altogether they weren’t ending this yet. (He valiantly ignored the thought that he also didn’t _want_ it to end just yet.)

He found his brother obsessing over the carburetor of the pick-up truck and balanced his laptop on the outer ridge of the bed.

“Hey, Dean, I’m not sure how you feel about this,” was how he started, with just the right amount of urgency, “but Sam called.”

Dean immediately appeared out from under the hood, eyes focused and alert.

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine,” he answered reassuringly, squashing the ever-present guilt of lying to him. “He says there’s a case nearby, and he was worried you might be getting a little cabin fever so he suggested we go check it out, if you’re feeling up to it. I told him I feel like the curse is only hitting you hard at night now, so I don’t see that as being too big of a problem. I said we’d talk about it.”

“What sort of a case?”

He wasn’t surprised at the uncertainty clouding his brother’s eyes as he wiped his hands clean on an old rag. They’d gone their separate ways a few times, but the Winchester brothers didn’t generally go for taking cases apart, especially with hunters whose methods they didn’t know.

“It looks like a ghost thing,” he answered, moving over so Dean could see the screen. “Some guests at a hotel a few towns over reported hearing voices coming from unoccupied rooms and footsteps running up and down the halls in the middle of the night, but when the desk attendant on duty goes to check it out, there’s nothing. Then, two weeks ago, there was a mysterious death in the basement, followed by another one on the third floor yesterday.”

Dean, despite himself, leaned interestedly to read the headline.

“How’d they die?”

“The guy in the basement had a brick allegedly fall off a nearby shelf and hit him squarely on the back of the head. He died three days later from hemorrhaging in the brain. The one last week was an elderly woman who fell down the main staircase leading into the lobby.”

“That doesn’t necessarily sound like a ghost thing. I mean, old people fall down stairs all the time, right?”

“Yeah, except she fell down the stairs _after_ somehow walking from her room at the far end of the hall…and leaving her wheelchair behind.”

Dean took a beat to process this.

“Yep, sounds like a ghost thing,” he confirmed, tossing the dirty old rag into the truck bed. “All right. I’m driving.”

Sam tried to be affronted, but knew there was little choice, and he really wasn’t bothered anyway.

+++++++

It was pretty odd, puttering over county lines hearing the engine rattle every time Dean pushed the gas too hard, instead of hearing the low soothing rumble of the Impala. The pickup hit potholes like they were craters, too, which made research a little hard to manage. Still, aside from that and the distinct lack of classic rock coming from a cassette, things felt more or less the same. Certainly the sense of anticipation bleeding over from Dean’s side of the car was familiar enough.

“A real-life ghost case,” his brother grinned, shaking his head. “You know how long it’s been since I’ve fought a simple vengeful spirit? Months, at least.”

Sam smiled thoughtfully.

“It says here the hotel used to be a small military hospital before it was renovated. It was in operation during the Civil War and was used by the Confederate soldiers to tend to the wounded, mainly after the Battle of Rivers’ Bridge. It was a Union victory with a lot of Confederate dead; there was a mass grave nearby where the Union soldiers put the bodies. That’s only a few miles from the hotel, if that.”

“So basically it’s a prime spot for a haunting,” Dean summarized bluntly.

“Basically, yeah. It also says that there’s a museum in one room of the hotel with relics featuring—get this—‘both items left over at the hotel and some from the mass grave,’ which was dug up in the late 1800s to bury the bodies properly.”

“Geez, what is it with people and old stuff? I mean what’s so fascinating about a bunch of dead guys’ flasks and shoes that you have to keep them around to haunt up a joint?”

Sam chuckled quietly.

“It would make our job a lot easier if nobody thought they were interesting,” he agreed.

Dean gave him a sidelong look, but the humor was gone from his face and replaced with curiosity.

“About that,” he said, “I never asked—how did you get into this line of work? You seem to be a pretty solitary kind of a guy. Have you always hunted alone?”

Sam didn't even have to think this time. Falling into the mind of Alex O’Brady was getting as easy as falling into the role of a fake FBI agent.

“Yeah. You know how it goes. My family and I had tragedy strike when I was a kid. A werewolf took my sister and I saw it happen, but nobody believed me. My mom ended up leaving, my dad became a drunk, and as soon as he died in a car wreck, I hopped the first bus out of town. Never looked back. I found out everything I could about monsters that take people’s hearts and eventually tracked down my first werewolf. After that, the rest is history. Just been going around on my own, taking out as many monsters as I can, trying to make the world a better place, you know?”

Dean was silent for a moment, and he glanced over to find his brow furrowed slightly, eyes on the road but full of thought.

“Sorry to hear that,” he said at last, low and gentle, “really.”

Sam smiled a little at his brother’s (sometimes hidden but very real) empathy.

“What about you? Are all the stories real?” he pressed.

“It’s like you said, tragedy struck my family too,” the other man answered casually. “A yellow-eyed demon killed my mom to get to my brother, all part of the big cosmic plan. Dad became obsessed, dragged us along with him into the hunting life. Sam got out for a while—twice, even went to college the first time, but you know The Life. Once you’ve been dragged into it, you don’t get far away before it drags you back.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed emphatically. “I get that. So you’ve always hunted together, then, apart from those times when Sam tried…you know, getting out?”

It was dangerous territory, he knew, skating on the topic. But he was feeling braver now after so many days, and there were some questions that he knew Dean would never answer if he asked as himself.

“Pretty much,” Dean replied openly. “There’ve been other times when one thing or another has driven us apart for a while, but that never lasts very long. I think the longest amount of time was a couple months or so, but it’s been years since anything even remotely like that has happened.”

Dean was right, he realized. They had both been their own types of unique messes after Lucifer got out. That had probably been the hardest time of Sam’s life; being apart from Dean, and knowing it was all his fault, had made it a thousand times harder. But he had come back. Dean had let him come back. Aside from that, there was no voluntary separation period that had lasted longer than a couple of weeks, and none at all since Dean had left in a fit of mistaken self-loathing right after Gadreel, years ago now. It was a peculiar realization, how much of their lives they had actually lived entirely _together_.

“Wow,” he said quietly. “You and your brother must really get along.”

“Not always,” Dean admitted with a little bit of gruff drollness, “for the most part, though. We’ve got to. I guess we both know—we’re all each other’s got, or ever likely to have, so we might as well stow the crap and fight on the same team.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Sam said petulantly before he thought about it.

“No, I don’t mean it like that,” Dean told him without hesitation. “It’s just, you know, we have what we need. We don’t get to keep much…almost nothing, except our car and Cas, the angel, usually, but we’ve always had each other, from the very beginning. Through everything, we’ve never lost that, even when it felt like we might. We’ve always bounced back, and at the end of the day all that matters is that I have him and he has me. That’s the most important thing, and we’re lucky enough that we know we’ve got it at least. Even if everything else is going to crap, I don’t have to wonder if he’s got my back and he knows I’ve got his.”

Sam flashed back in his mind to Jody, sitting across from him in a motel room in South Dakota, smiling that endearing cool-mom smile.

_“You and Dean? That’s something special, don’t you think?”_ (2)

“Something like that really is lucky,” Sam said softly, startled at Dean’s openness, “and definitely worth holding onto. I can see why you never have gone your separate ways.”

Dean met his eyes, and looking at it from a stranger’s perspective, suddenly Sam could see exactly what Jody had seen. Dean looked away again, a touch of the softest sentiment touching his features as he was obviously thinking of Sam; then he grunted an agreement before turning his attention back to the road, and Sam knew that the conversation was over for now. He sat back and thought about it for the next twenty minutes—until Dean turned on the stereo and found a classic rock station he liked enough to blast at full volume.

+++++++

What started out as a single-lost-soul case turned into a multiple-vengeful-spirits case pretty quick after one murder and two terrified families bolting in the first night. A chance discovery in the private garage on the second day led them to flash a blacklight on the walls and doors of the hotel. As they’d feared, occultist symbols shone clearly under the blacklight’s weird glow. The new owners finally admitted that using witchcraft found online to “make the hotel’s history more exciting” and “draw in energy to attract young adventurers” probably wasn’t such a good idea after all. But the damage had already been done, and the newly summoned spirits weren’t going anywhere until the binding sigils were crossed out and the hotel cleansed.

Clearing out an old hotel because of an alleged black mold infestation is the easy part of a cleansing. The hard part is avoiding the vengeful spirits’ attempts to stop you long enough to get all the symbols de-juiced…and, boy, did this one have a lot of symbols.

“How much friggin’ invisible paint did these creeps _buy_?”

Dean’s outburst was drowned out by the sound of a picture frame hitting the wall beside his head. Sam fired the shotgun in the general direction of the shifting shadow across the dim hotel room, and the rock salt sent something screaming away just before a wall lamp twisted sideways at his own head. He ducked and swung the crowbar, another fading cry shaking the walls before Dean could spray their fluorescent paint in a nonspecific pattern that disfigured the sigil over the side table.

“We should make them reimburse us for the cans we had to buy, too,” Sam suggested, scanning the room for any more flickers to shoot.

They had enough to deal with from regular monsters just existing in general, without a couple of New Age idiots _hauling_ them from their peaceful slumber. He normally didn’t like to accept payment from people they helped, but this time he wouldn’t mind his $58.12 returned for these stupid spray cans and the two pocket-sized blacklights.

“Wasn’t this the last one in the rooms?” Dean asked hurriedly, clicking off the purple-glowing flashlight.

“Yeah,” Sam replied. “There’s one more over the fireplace in the sitting area downstairs, and that’s it, according to Rex and Tammy.”

“Friggin’ hippies,” Dean growled as he followed Sam into the hall.

There was an unmistakeable ripple of energy that sent the lamps flickering in a wave all the way down, and when they turned to look, a dark mass in a dirt-and-blood covered uniform screamed silently at them from the other end, his once-human mouth stretching down too wide and his black-encircled eyes dripping with unshed tears and blood. In the next instant, the fallen soldier—the general, the leader who’d watched his men die, the strongest of them all and the one capable of holding on the longest—came running toward them like a fired bullet. He grabbed Sam’s arm, ripping at the sleeve of his jacket like a desperate animal full of rage, his touch freezing even through the layers Sam wore. Before Sam could do anything, the ghost slammed him onto the floor several feet away and started trying to rip through his chest with flailing, flickering hands.

Dean swiped up the fallen crowbar and cut through the apparition with one smooth blow.

“Come on, come on!”

Sam grabbed his hand and allowed him to yank him to his feet, and the two of them stumbled down the main staircase toward the lobby as lights exploded and floorboards splintered and walls cracked. They had only just passed into the sitting area when the spirit appeared again, this time hurtling them both in different directions.

Sam’s vision darkened and his hearing went out, and he knew in a few seconds he would probably be unconscious. He had the strange sensation of his brain tilting in his head, and as it did he couldn’t remember where he was or what he was doing, only that he was supposed to be watching his brother’s back.

Dean’s back was going to be sore tomorrow, that was for sure, but he wasn’t dizzy as he shoved himself back up. Clutching the crowbar in one hand and the spray paint in the other, he looked around frantically until he spotted the still body at the foot of the opposite wall.

“Alex!”

His worried outburst was heard only by the spirit, whose silent, tortured weeping had only gotten worse. It ripped fistfuls of its own hair in apparent agony, and then turned toward Dean.

Prying his eyes away from the other man’s unmoving form, Dean sprinted over the coffee table between him and the fireplace. He’d lost his blacklight somewhere in the tussle, so he just aimed over the mantle and let loose with the invisible paint.

A loud crash warned him that the coffee table had struck a china cabinet, and he had only a second before it felt like his leg was bitten into and he was pulled away with a hoarse cry of pain. He swung uselessly at the spirit with the crowbar as he was dragged across the rug, but it couldn’t reach and a moment later it was flung from his grasp anyway.

His leg was released, but only because the spirit was pummeling at his body now instead. Blow after blow struck him with almost enough force to break bone, and without the iron or the salt there was nothing he could do to stop it. Each time he tried getting up he was whipped down again, until he wasn’t even sure which way _was_ up. Then, finally, frozen-cold fingertips tore through his shirt. He heard himself cry out and try to twist away, but it was useless as he felt the scratches appear on his skin over his heart.

Oddly, or maybe not so much, he thought of his brother.

_Sorry, Sammy,_ was all he could think as he was sure this one stupid little ghost was going to finish him, a hundred miles away from the one person he wanted to be with when he died.

The next instant, everything was quiet, and his eyes flew open to see Alex standing unsteadily in front of the fireplace, spray can in one hand and blacklight in the other, aiming purple at the now-disfigured sigil.

Dean scrambled to his feet unsteadily, wincing and wrapping his arm around his hurting body, and the two of them looked blankly at each other for a moment.

Then, the new peaceful silence was destroyed by a splintered creak. The older Winchester didn’t see where it was coming from, but Sam did. 

“Watch out!”

Sam dove forward just in time to slam his brother out of the way of the falling enormous chandelier, whose rope had become dislodged from the wall hook during all the energy bursts. Its glass bulbs and crystals shattered into shards right where Dean had been standing, before everything went silent again.

From where they were sprawled together now on the floor a foot away, Sam was just letting out a small sigh of relief, wide eyes locked onto the heavy iron fixture that would have crushed Dean for sure, hand locked onto his brother’s arm, when he realized Dean wasn’t looking at the mess. He was staring at _him_ , with a strange light in his warm green gaze.

“What?” he questioned, still catching his breath.

Dean continued to stare for another heartbeat, a look that was nothing short of adoration lighting up his whole face.

“Alex,” he said, “man, where have you _been_ all my life?”

+++++++

(1) Reference to _Dead in the Water_ (1x3)  
(2) Reference to _Rock and a Hard Place_ (9x8)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to let you guys know, next week's chapter is going to be pretty short--only around 2,000 words or so. It's not that important why, but if you were curious, when I wrote this fic I actually had it split into a Part 1 and Part 2. So next week is going to be the end of "Part 1" and that's why it's on the shorter side.  
> Anyway, sorry if that bored you, and thanks so so much for reading so far!! Have a great week!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left kudos! And to the people who commented, I'm so grateful you took the time, and I think this chapter, though short, will answer some of your very good questions from the previous chapter. ;)

As the curse had less and less of a hold, the sex got better and better—not only the sex, but the regular day-to-day stuff too. Sam wasn’t sure if Dean noticed, but he sure as hell did, their conversations inexplicably turning more sweet and relaxed and their nights more affectionate and playful, an odd mimicry of their relationship as brothers. They talked about hunting—a lot—and different ways of killing different scary crap, but that wasn’t all. On the roof at night, under millions of unfiltered stars, they talked about life too. Sam confessed between swallows of beer that he still thought sometimes about having kids, and Dean (to his complete shock) confessed he occasionally daydreamed about putting his little girl’s hair in pigtails for school. They discussed places they’d live if they could, and what they would have done if not for The Life (and it didn’t escape Sam’s notice that Dean’s answers mostly started with “Me and Sam…”). 

A couple of times Sam, who could only pretend to be wandering around in the signal-less woods for so long, had to sneak away for a food run to place a call "checking in" on Dean. He was a little surprised that Dean said very little about Alex, or the time they were spending together, but to push meant to risk getting caught, so both times he assured his older brother that he was fine, nothing important going on, and received assurances in return, before hanging up and returning to Dean's side. Both times he was certain his brother had no idea, but the second time Dean seemed to catch the cloud on "Alex's" face and, misinterpreting guilt as sadness, asked what was wrong. Sam responded by planting an unselfconscious kiss on Dean's mouth and shoving the bag of food in his hands with a disarming smile, while excusing his mood with a story about a bad driver on the main road. He had to turn away quickly, though, as the guilt suddenly worsened and a voice in the back of his head reminded him that lies pile up, _don't they_?

As the days went on, the two of them laughed freely at “Alex’s” increasingly horrifying cooking skills, and at some point Dean’s spot in the living room shifted from the recliner to the sofa, right next to Sam, so they were that much closer. They wrestled in the dirt outside (Dean usually won) and then ordered cheap Chinese to-go (nothing fried, though, Sam’s rules) and took turns picking the movies (westerns for Dean and thrillers for Sam). Sam didn’t even realize how young they both seemed until Dean pointed it out on their way home from town the twenty-sixth evening.

“Man, I haven’t felt this good in years,” he straight-out grinned.

Sam watched him smile in the passing streetlights, and couldn’t help but smile too. He knew what Dean meant; a month’s worth of days at the lake, evenings at the bar, and regular meal times did that. But he had to fight down the niggling thought that there was something more….

“Yeah,” he agreed finally, looking out the window, “me too.”

That night, Dean’s eyes didn’t shift at all. Sam didn’t say anything about it, but he knew Dean could feel it. After nearly a month, the curse was gone from his system. But even when that became obvious, neither of them stopped.

Their sex was slow, quiet, and ended with a deep and lingering kiss, each with a hand on the other’s jaw as Dean slid out carefully. Usually the older man rolled back onto his side of the bed afterward, but tonight was different. Tonight, he slipped an arm a little hesitantly over Sam’s abdomen, and after a breathless second, Sam shifted closer toward his warmth. Dean subsequently moved closer, and somehow they ended up with Sam's ear pressed against the calming pattern of Dean's heartbeat, now thankfully strong and regular. He could feel Dean hesitate for an instant, one breath unsteady, and then he relaxed and his arm came to encircle Sam and toy with idle fingers in his hair.

Sam took a steadying breath of his own and watched in the moonlight as Dean's other hand rested on his sternum; the younger brother was sleepily distracted for a while, eyes following the rise and fall of Dean's hand with each breath, until he unthinkingly settled his own hand on top of Dean's. Immediately Dean caught Sam's index finger under his thumb, and Sam curled the rest of his fingers around Dean's hand and drifted off to sleep.

+++++++

The next day, Dean didn’t actually pack his things until around noon. Sam watched him as he cleared away the plates from their late breakfast, and noted that while his brother’s face wasn’t necessarily sad, it was definitely not as happy as yesterday. It was neutral, and that meant he was hiding some pretty big unspoken feelings.

After only a few minutes, Dean was standing in the middle of the living room with his duffel over his shoulder just like when he’d arrived, only now he looked much healthier and like he wanted to stick around rather than bolt.

Sam swallowed and stood in front of him, honestly not knowing what to say or do. It had worked; Dean was better and Cas was going to erase both their memories. It would be like it never happened, and in the meantime nobody had been hurt. For once, everything had turned out exactly as he’d planned.

Except it definitely hadn’t, because there was a crap-ton of thoughts and feelings bouncing around his head and none of them were very clear, but he was afraid of what they might mean if they were.

“So, uh,” Dean said, familiar gravelly voice loud after the long silence, “I guess this is it, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sam replied much more quietly. “Guess so.”

“Well, uh, thanks, you know, for everything. I still don’t know what made you do it, but I’m glad you did, so…thanks.”

“You don’t have to thank me.” _You never have to._ “I was happy to do it. These last few weeks have been really nice—a lot nicer than I was expecting. You’re a good man, Dean. I’m glad I got to know you like this.”

His brother averted his gaze, apparently not knowing how to reply for a moment, but then he lifted his eyes and spoke again.

“I’m glad too,” he said, and then continued after another long moment. “Well, I’ll just go outside and, you know, use the old soul phone to pray my angel here to get me. Might be a little weird to see him swipe me out of nowhere, if you’re not used to that kinda thing.”

“Yeah, right, no problem.”

Sam followed him to the door, and Dean was within reach of the knob when he squared his shoulders and turned back around.

“Hey, listen, Alex, I know you’ve probably got some stuff going on. I’m sure there’s plenty of hunts I’ve been keeping you from while I’ve been here. But, uh, I’ve been thinking, and the truth is, Sam and I could use a hunter like you around. You know, you’ve got the skills and the know-how, plus you’re, like, twelve-and-a-half feet tall…”

Sam couldn’t help but chuckle at that, which cut Dean’s rambling short.

“My point is,” he said, loudly, looking anywhere but in Sam’s eyes, “I’m sure Sam would like to meet you in person. Would you like to, maybe, come back with me? Nothing permanent, or anything—just for a little bit. There’s plenty of room in the bunker and a library I know you and Sam would love to nerd out over. The Men of Letters had a lot of info that’s been helpful to us over the years. You might like to check it out. Plus I owe you a month’s worth of meals and booze, at least, so…what do you say?”

Sam couldn’t say anything. Leave it to Dean to pull out the unexpected at the end of a whole month’s worth of unexpected. Ridiculously, he found himself slipping into the mindset of Alex O’Brady. What would Alex say? Would he say yes?

_Yes._

It didn’t matter. There was no Alex. Every conversation they’d had, everything they’d done—it had all been him, _Sam_ , and this was taking it too far.

“Dean, look,” he started, and he could see the light fading from those hopeful green eyes in just those two words, “I appreciate the offer, I really do. But it’s like you said—there’s a lot of stuff I have to take care of. You know how it is; you’re a hunter too. You seriously have no idea what responsibilities I have to get back to.” _You, for one thing._ “I’m not saying I don’t want to. I just can’t.” _I really, really can’t._

Dean had looked pointedly away, and Sam could see his jaw clenching as a faint blush colored his cheeks.

“Yeah, yeah, no, I get it,” he replied hastily, adjusting the strap of his duffel on his shoulder. “You got plenty of fights to fight, and I do too.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said automatically, because Dean looked genuinely upset and he never meant for that to happen.

A small, disappointed smile quirked at the corner of his brother’s mouth for a moment, but then he shook his head and pulled out a shred of wrinkled paper from his pocket.

“Well, I want you to have this at least,” he said, handing it over. “It’s my cell. After everything you’ve done for us, you deserve to know that if you ever need me or Sam, we’re there. I know you’ve got Sam’s number already, but that’s just in case. All you have to do is call me, Alex. I mean it.”

Sam’s eyes flickered over the already long-memorized number and Dean’s sloppy signature underneath.

“Thanks,” he said with a small smile, sliding it into his pocket to throw away as soon as Dean was gone.

Dean nodded, and opened the door. He was one step onto the porch when he turned around once again.

“See you around, Alex.”

Sam nodded and didn’t even think to hesitate as Dean stepped closer to kiss him. He leaned into it like it was the most natural thing he’d ever done. It was several heartbeats before they parted, probably longer than either of them were planning, and neither looked at the other again as Sam shut the door. A second later, he heard the heavy flutter of angel wings on the other side.

A few minutes later, Cas appeared in the center of the room.

“I told him you were getting beer,” was the first thing he said, “and he went to his room to put his things away. I fixed his mind. He should recognize you again, but he’s still going to see you as a separate person from Alex. We can now erase the memory entirely whenever you’re ready.”

“Okay, yeah, thanks, Cas.”

The angel was quiet for too long, watching as Sam tossed the scrap of paper with Dean’s number into the trash can, and Sam lifted his head to see the familiar tilt of curiosity.

“Sam, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Seriously, Cas. Everything went exactly how we wanted. Dean was…” _Dean was what? Relaxed? At peace? Happy?_ “…fine. I’m okay. No problems at all, which is kind of new for us, so, that’s good.”

“Good. Do you still want me to erase your memories? I have a couple of hunts I can put in the place of the last month, if you want—for you _and_ Dean.”

“No.” He surprised himself with his own intensity. “No. It wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought. I feel bad enough about all this without messing with Dean’s head even more. Just leave it.”

The head tilt of curiosity was back again, but Cas relaxed his furrowed brow after a moment.

“Okay. Ready?”

“Yeah. Oh, hang on.”

As soon as he had a six-pack from the fridge in hand, Cas touched his arm, and the world around him broke apart before righting itself again as the inside of the bunker.

He’d hardly recovered from the initial dizziness before a figure appeared from around the corner.

“Hey! Sammy!”

He almost lost his hold on the six-pack when Dean threw his arms around his shoulders in a crushing bearhug.

“H-hey, Dean,” he gasped out, his lungs fighting for air.

Dean released him, and he was happy to see his brother’s eyes sparkling, the sting of Alex’s rejection pushed aside in the face of a reunion with Sam after almost a month.

“Man, you’re a sight of sore eyes, and with beer too? This is my kind of welcome-home.”

He swiped the pack from Sam’s hand and wasted no time popping one open.

“Well, how was it, Dean? Are you okay? What about the curse?”

Dean propped his feet up on the table and took a long gulp before replying.

“Yeah, man, everything’s cool. Everything except that you neglected to tell me Alex was a dude and not a chick. I know I already brought that up on the phone but don’t think I’ve forgotten about it.”

“We thought it might be best for you to find out on your own,” Castiel supplied, as he rounded the table and sat down as well.

“Yeah, thanks a lot for the heads-up, guys. Really appreciate it.”

“How was he?” Sam ventured, sitting down across from his brother and accepting the offered beer. “What did you think?”

“Of what? Alex?”

“No, of the Virginian countryside. Yes, of course I mean Alex.”

“Whoa, man, calm down, okay? Alex was fine. He was…a good guy, really good. He was a great hunter and definitely capable, and that’s all the details you’re getting because I don’t kiss and tell. Suffice it to say you two did good finding him, so…thanks.” He shifted in his seat, shook himself slightly, and then leaned forward. “Now, come on, I want to know what’s been going on here. How’d the hunt with Hascal go, Sammy? Come on, tell me all about it. It’s been a month and I want to know what’s been going on here while I was gone.”

And that was that…

…until a month later, when Sam sent the first text from a burner phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Sam, my darling boy, you're headed for trouble at high-speed with this one.
> 
> Well, there you have it--the end of "Part 1!" Think of this as the curtain dropping for intermission and Part 2 will begin next Tuesday. <3 As always, thank you for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say the next update would be Tuesday? Well, Merry Christmas! ;) I hope your Christmas Eve was absolutely wonderful, because apart from one little bright spot in the day, mine was pretty shitty. But that's just how it goes sometimes, I guess. x) So this is me spreading some yuletide positivity with an early update. Thanks so much for reading so far, and here we go onto the beginning of "Part 2."

To be exact, he waited a month, eight days, and about fourteen hours before texting. That was as long as he could stand to watch Dean mope. Oh, his big brother thought he was hiding it, that’s for sure; he drank and hunted and teased just like always, but at least once every few days, the word “Alex” slipped out of his mouth seemingly without his realizing it.

_“You want bacon or sausage, Sam? Hey, did I tell you Alex is as awful at cooking as you are? Shocking though that may seem, there are others out there.”_

_“We should go out to the lake sometime, you know. We always say we will but we never do. I guess that’s always how it is when you live near it. Alex never went to the lake near his place either until I was there.”_

_“Man, remember when we were kids and we watched all that daytime TV? I didn’t realize back then how much it sucks. When I was at Alex’s, we just rented DVDs every time we went into town. Thank God we’ve got this streaming stuff, right? Watcha wanna watch? Your turn to pick.”_

It was always in the middle of a conversation, so Sam never felt obliged to point it out. But it was definitely there, repeatedly. And there was something in his eyes too—a strange sort of sadness that took Sam a long time to recognize as loneliness.

That made it pretty hard to ignore everything that had happened between them. Dean had no way of knowing, of course, but that only made it worse. Each time Sam heard the name mentioned so very casually, a flood of memories—clean and dirty—washed over him, and he had to force himself not to react.

But even without Dean’s lingering infatuation, the memories showed up…usually at night, while he was lying in bed alone, and they chased him into his dreams until he sometimes woke up expecting Dean to be asleep beside him. As the days went on, he wondered how it could be possible that one month of being someone else could change a whole lifetime of knowing his brother. He wondered just as often if it was some kind of perverted delusion, but couldn’t really convince himself of that. Whatever it was, it had been real, for both of them. He knew that much.

And he missed it. God, he really did. When he had been Alex, he had missed being Dean’s brother. Now, he was Sammy again, and he missed being Alex. And it was easy for him to see that Dean missed Alex just as much.

It was stupid—one of the dumbest things he’d ever done, and he’d freed Satan once—but he’d gotten dangerously drunk on old whiskey that night in his room, and he’d thought,

_Maybe we can have both?_

+++++++

_Hey I know its 3 am but i need you to know I miss sitting at thelake with you._

_Is this Alex?_

_Yeah  
hey Dean_

_Dude are you drunk-texting me? that’s so teen angst of you._

_I knowsorry_

_Hey no worries we’ve all been there over a fantastic ex_

_Shut up i’m drunk_

_are you someplace safe at least?_

_home_

_Good. You want to put down the phone and get some sleep now?_

_Are you ok Dean. I worry about you_

_I’m flattered. really. I’m good. No relapses here. Go to sleep Alex_

_Text me tomorrow_

_Ok but remember you asked so don’t be surprised_

_Thanks_

_Loser_

+++++++

Sam woke up the next morning with an obnoxiously cheery good-morning message filled with so many brightly-colored emojis his hungover eyes crossed. He debated for thirty minutes about whether to respond or to pretend it had never happened at all, toss the burner phone into the meat grinder, and try to ignore Dean’s (not to mention his own) persistent but errant feelings. In the end he decided he wasn’t in any state to make a decision, except to put it off until after the Tylenol kicked in.

Then the next text came through, halfway into the long and painful process of brushing his teeth.

_Look— I know we left things kind of final in Virginia but could you at least let me know you didn’t pass out and choke on your own vomit? I’d hate to have to come take out your ghost after I get done making breakfast here_

_Yeah. Sorry. Don’t know what got into me last night. Sorry to bother you like that._

_It was no bother. seriously. surprising but not a bother. you good now?_

_Honestly I’m not sure. I was just thinking about you and wanted to check in but maybe it was a mistake. Sorry._

When no response came after that, Sam tried not to feel disappointed that maybe Dean wasn’t as open to continuing with Alex as he’d seemed to be; he tried to tell himself it was for the best, for both of them, but no reasoning he used felt convincing enough as he threw on some clothes and steadied his balance so Dean wouldn’t catch onto his hangover. 

Even knowing his brother was completely unaware, he still held his breath as he followed the scent of eggs and bacon into the kitchen and settled at the table. Apart from tossing his phone down hastily on the counter as Sam had walked in, Dean didn’t appear to be affected by his little reconnection, and simply splashed some coffee in mugs for them both as they began their day with a chat about a possible werewolf case in Wyoming.

It wasn’t until Sam returned to his room to pack his duffel for the drive that he checked the hidden burner phone again, and found a message received just after he’d left the room earlier.

_Look its your choice, no pressure here, but I’ll be honest I miss those lake days too. I’m good with just talking if you’re ok with that. Doesn’t have to be anything more if you don’t want it to be_

Sam inhaled a shaky breath, but then he thought in a flash about how Dean had looked that last night—how he’d thrusted slow and deep and gentle, how he’d petted Alex’s hair from his face with tracing fingers, how he’d turned his scruffy, smiling cheek into Alex’s hand and nuzzled his palm with a kiss, how his eyes had gleamed down at Alex with _almost close_ to the same amount of soul-deep affection he’d always reserved for Sam only. He thought about how it had felt to fall asleep to the beat of Dean's heart with his protective arms wrapping him up, and how sad they had both seemed in the morning, knowing it was over and Dean was leaving. Lastly he thought about these texts, turning them over and over in his head.

He only pondered for another moment before sending back a reply and tossing the phone into the bottom of the duffel.

_Sounds good, thanks. How have you been?_

+++++++

After that first exchange, the text conversations meandered, sometimes one winding on uninterrupted for days. Sam was surprised to find he didn’t have to lie about as much of his nonexistent life as he’d anticipated. In the end, they talked about all sorts of things—The Life, of course, but more than that about music, food, movies, favorite midwestern state, favorite roadside motel, least favorite monster, least favorite one-night stand, best places to find burgers, worst places to find burgers, and even the weather which was somehow not as dull as it sounded. Despite their differences when they were young and even those that persisted now, Sam was a bit unnerved to discover exactly how much he and Dean had in common when it was all laid out in messages in front of him like this.

They talked about deeper things too. Although he knew Dean was far from an emotionally immature person, he also knew his big brother had gotten into the habit from childhood of holding onto things he might have trouble voicing. As an adult now, he talked to Sam more than he did anybody else about these things—in fact, he almost _only_ talked to Sam about these things—but after a while the younger brother began to notice that conversations he’d had verbally with Dean in the Impala or in the bunker kitchen were repeated in a different context with Alex over text. 

Something of an info network always existed in their world; in this line of work that was an invaluable asset. But these work-related conversations went beyond little warnings or updates that could be useful for other hunters; in these talks, Sam could sense Dean trying to open up to Alex more and more about things recently only Sam himself would have been privy to. There were even a couple of times when Dean texted him with a note of obvious need to talk after a hunt gone wrong. And Sam responded, always, with all the same support he showed in real life as himself, and was always rewarded for his double effort with a slightly less morose brother on the harder days.

Many times the always pleasant and playful chatting turned to flirting, and there were a few times when the late-night flirting very nearly became more, but Sam was careful. He tried to be so, so careful, especially when the awareness of what he was doing threatened to crush him. But how could he stop? He’d sent that first text and that had been a stupid drunken mistake, but just like he’d suspected would happen, Dean was _better_ now. He could see glimpses of that Dean Winchester from back in Virginia, the one who was very clearly starting to fall pretty hard for a stranger and becoming happier and healthier all the way around for it, and how the hell could he justify ending it?

But how the hell could he justify continuing it either?

He didn’t know the answer to either, and so he wracked his brain when he was sure Dean wouldn’t notice and looked forward to the next text without ever figuring it out.

As far as conversation about himself went, Sam had fully prepared himself for some kind of offensive commentary from Dean—the stereotypical big brother grievances that come with the territory, the open complaining that come from day after day of constantly being together, and even maybe a deep angry thought here or there that might happen when you think you’re talking to someone confidentially about someone else. In fact, he was intent on avoiding as much conversation about himself as possible, but that was proving to be harder than he’d planned. Realizing exactly how much of your life is intertwined with someone else's is enough to make you reevaluate yourself—at least, it is when you’re a Winchester brother, apparently. What he had expected was Dean potentially being an ass about him to Alex. What he got instead were a lot of admittedly heartwarming surprises.

+++++++

_In New Orleans for the weekend. Sucks that we’re a week early for Mardi Gras. Been a lifelong dream of mine to eat crocodile meat and drink Bourbon at the same time._

_Right and I’m sure the tradition with the beads hasn’t even crossed your mind._

_If its out in the street I can hardly avoid looking can I? You sound like Sam._

_He’s not a lifelong Mardi Gras fan like you then?_

_You talked to him. Based on that I think you can answer that. Hoping he’ll let us stay an extra week after this voodoo thing is wrapped up but I’m not putting any money down._

_You could stay without him if he really insists on leaving._

_Nah not really our style. Wouldn't be the same if he's not with me._

+++++++

_You’re insane. Licorice is disgusting._

_Says the man who eats fish straight from the sea_

_It was sushi and it was one time._

_I cant believe I kissed you. You and Sam should just get married. Take your unholy raw tentacle fetish and leave me with my perfect rope of movie candy goodness._

_Nobody with taste buds wants it so it’s all yours. And I’m sure he’d appreciate the help dealing with you._

_If anyone needs help its me.  
Someone has to hold him down so I can cut that hair. Used to be dad or Bobby growing up. Now its grown like a damn weed garden._

_Maybe he likes it long._

_He’s not the one who has to look at it every morning. Its like having coffee with Big Foot._

_My hair is long too so I think I sympathize more with him on this one. It’s kind of a matter of principle._

_Figures.  
You have the puppy eyes too like a damn spell. Even if I managed to hold one of you down I’d never get close enough with the scissors. Never could make Sam do anything but one look from him and I’d back off without him even having to open his damn mouth. He could make me sell my car if he wanted. _

_No way. Nothing could be that powerful._

_Almost did once. He got sick at college and thought he needed surgery but had no legal insurance. It was the one time I visited Stanford and the whole place sucked the big one. Stunk like pricey cologne and electric hippie cars and lost freedom._

_What happened?_

_He was puking his guts up every ten minutes and they found something weird on the x-ray they told us might be serious. Ended up being nothing but a bad case of stomach flu and a gimpy x-ray machine. Won’t ever forget the look he gave me when I walked in. It was too expensive to risk putting on a fake credit card so I went out and had the car priced right after just in case.  
Never tell him I told you. The point is you could give that look too if you tried. Two of you and I wouldn’t stand a chance in hell._

_Good to know._

+++++++

_Sorry for the time. Phone got broken and I haven’t had the chance to get a new one until now. Sammy got hurt on a job yesterday._

_I was worried about you._

_Sorry. Sam was poisoned. High fever and chills mostly. Better now though. I think he’s asleep in his room_

_Must’ve been rough on you._

_Scared me. Like I told you he’s all I have. Everything else goes but Sam stays. Kind of the rule._

_I’m glad you have each other._

_Still waiting for you to come here and meet him in person if you ever get the chance._

_Afraid you’ll have to wait a little longer. I’m on a case in the midwest right now, will probably take me a few more weeks._

+++++++

Every night was the same. Sam would go to bed first, and Dean would pretend to want to stay up a little later and read or drink or watch TV. But as soon as Sam was settled in his own room, the texts would start up.

During the day, it was easy to conceal the small phone in a separate pocket from his main phone. Anytime it buzzed faintly he already knew it was from Dean so he was careful never to pull it out while around him. Still, he was grateful his brother mostly wanted to talk to Alex late at night. He knew why—not so long ago, Dean had made a point to say he didn’t think about or want a relationship with anyone anymore. The only real relationship he’d ever had had fallen apart, and now Lisa and Ben literally didn’t even know he existed. At thirty-nine, a new, genuine interest was probably the last thing Dean was expecting. And Alex _had_ sort of turned him down before. He probably thought this was as far as it was going—after all, _“we’re still lucky we even get that at all”_ had been his exact words that night in the Impala so long before. (1)

No, Dean’s neglect to share his new texting life with Sam wasn’t an issue. Meanwhile, Sam’s half of it was clearly nothing _but_ issues.

A week in, he'd thought about breaking it off.

Two weeks in, he'd told himself he _would_ break it off—as soon as he felt like Dean was ready.

A month in, he’d decided if Dean was the one he was doing this for, he should be the one to break it off, so he’d just wait until Dean finally told him he wasn’t the domestic type and it’s been fun but _adios, Alex_.

A month and a half in, Sam listened to Dean pleasantly hum _Thank You_ by Led Zeppelin as he made pancakes with actual fresh strawberries on top, and realized his big brother was almost as content as he’d been during that month with Alex, and maybe it wasn’t going to be Dean to break it off, after all.

Two months in, and he realized that aside from the guilt, he was happier than he'd ever been too, and it wasn’t going to be him either.

Three months in, it all went to hell.

+++++++

(1) Reference to _Baby_ (11x4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, the next update will be Tuesday, for real this time. x) Merry Christmas again and a Happy New Year!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good wishes to everyone who wished ME a good Christmas after my shitty Christmas Eve, because it worked! Christmas Day was fantastic for me and I hope it was equally good for you too. The new year is coming up and let's ALL wish for a better one than this year. <3 Meanwhile, the angst and drama in this fic took its time coming but it's here at last. Enjoy! x)

Like always, what should’ve been a milk run had escalated into a near-disaster.

The vampires in the nest were mostly newborns, replacements created by a very motherly vamp whose previous nest had been destroyed. Her new children were confused, inexperienced, and clumsy, but there were four of them and one got a lucky blow in. Sam had lost his footing thanks to some loose hay, and his fall from the barn loft to the dirt floor below had resulted in a concussion that, despite being relatively mild, had knocked him out cold on the spot.

After reassuring him several times that his brother would awaken soon, the nurse had handed Sam’s belongings over to Dean—one wallet, one (fake) FBI badge, one pocketknife…and two cell phones.

Dean could hardly blame the nurse for leaving as soon as she could with a pointed huff; he wasn’t the most patient man on a good day, and when Sam was hurt even that little reserve went away. But he didn’t spare a thought for her, as he weighed the two phones in his palm. One he was used to seeing, while the other was totally unfamiliar.

It was a burner with no photos, no calls, just one text thread with a text that hadn’t been viewed yet—an image of a funny billboard he’d seen on a pitstop and thought Alex would enjoy. This was _Alex’s_ phone.

For a moment, no emotions really kicked in, and he only drew a complete blank. He’d just been texting Alex last night to tell him where they were…When could Sam have gotten his phone?…Was he around and didn’t tell him?…Why would he have told Sam he was nearby and not Dean?…And if Sam knew about him and Alex, why hadn’t he said anything? This wasn’t something Sam was likely to ignore even if Dean obviously chose not to mention it to him…

Momentarily overwhelmed, his eyes wandered to the hospital bed where Sam lay with a bandaged head. Two memories suddenly, unexpectedly collided—an hour ago, turning to see Sam unmoving on the ground, shouting his name…and six months ago, seeing Alex lying in almost the same position on the haunted hotel floor, shouting _his_ name…

In his mind, the double memory of his own voice shouting two names blended into one frightened cry, and those two faces, Alex’s and Sam’s, suddenly merged and then didn’t, couldn’t…

…because there was only one face to begin with.

Breath catching in his chest and head suddenly pounding and dizzy like the first few seconds of waking up with a hangover, Dean left the other items on the table and found his way to the empty picnic area outside. He stood next to the barely-running fountain, the early morning sun lighting up the walled area in a pale glow, and prayed.

“Cas,” he began, barely concealing the urgency and hoping against hope the anger and disbelief forming at the back of his mind were misguided, “I need to talk to you. Now. So get your feathery ass here ASAP.” A heartbeat. “Please, Cas.”

A flapping sound overpowered the electric buzzing of a the nearby sidewalk light, still on from the ebbing nighttime, and he turned to see his friend looking exactly as he always did—ordinary but somehow otherworldly, and a little confused.

“Dean, is everything okay? Where’s Sam?”

Dean’s words tangled a little in his head before he could say them aloud, and he didn’t quite know how to ask when he wasn’t even sure what the question was yet.

“Cas, I need…”

Their angel’s eyes narrowed slightly in question, and he knew then he must look as unbalanced as he felt. Thoughts and memories were becoming less hazy now, and the glimpses he had of five months ago in Virginia, though jagged and disjointed, gave him the clarity he needed to continue in a voice that was surer but still trembled with brewing emotion.

“I want you to take me to Alex O’Brady, the guy who helped us out with that witch curse on me a few months back.”

Blue eyes glanced away, chapped lips parted slightly in almost a wince, and for Cas those were not good signs, not at all.

“Dean—”

“I’m not kidding, Cas. Take me to Alex now. I need to see him.”

“Why? Where’s Sam?”

There was a hardness in his friend’s voice, the same hardness that was always there when Dean was on the edge of forcing him to admit something he didn’t want to. That alone dropped a few more pieces into place, and Dean didn’t know when his hands had balled into fists, but now they were shaking at his sides. Clenching his jaw, he decided on a more direct approach; he forced one hand to be still and pulled the burner phone from his jacket pocket.

“Sam’s fine,” he answered bitingly, trying to maintain a calmness he wasn’t feeling. “We were on a hunt and he got knocked out during the fight with some vamps. I brought him here to get him checked out. They gave me the stuff out of his pockets, and this—” He held it up inches from Castiel’s face. “—is Alex’s cell. I want to know how it got in _Sam’s_ pocket, and I think you can tell me a little something about that.”

Dark brows furrowed in bewilderment as the angel took the phone and read some of the thread of texts on the screen. It was a moment before he responded.

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh, really?” Dean snatched the phone from his hands. “Because I gotta say, I’m getting some real funky vibes here, man, and it’s startin’ to feel like something’s been going on that everyone understands but me. I swear, if you don’t start telling me the truth, Cas, I’m gonna be pretty _friggin’_ pissed. So if I were you, I’d think hard about what you got to say to me.”

The worried frown on Cas’ face deepened, as his gaze flickered down to the phone, reading a few more of the affectionate messages, and then darted off to the side again, never looking at Dean once. Then, suddenly, a strange look almost like recognition slipped over his features, followed by apprehension—the same kind of apprehension that he always had when he was about to tell Dean something he knew he wouldn’t like.

Before Cas even started speaking, Dean could feel the dread overtaking him—dread and rage and a hundred other emotions, because a cherished memory of Alex 's dimpled smile across the Virginian breakfast table had abruptly turned into _Sam’s smile_.

+++++++

Sam was just repacking the last of his clothes into his duffel when the motel room door swung open. He didn’t even have to look up as he folded his other pair of jeans and stuffed them in the overfull bag.

“Hey, where’ve you been? I was discharged like three hours ago. It doesn’t take _that_ long to set an old barn on fire. What, did you stop at a bar on the way here, celebrate a closed case without me?”

Three loud thuds grabbed his attention, and he looked down to see three more old duffels at his feet, all crammed as full as his overnight one on the bed.

“What’s that?”

“That is all your stuff.”

Anyone would have recognized the clipped, cold anger that iced over every word, but only Sam knew Dean well enough to see the hell-hot rage blazing behind his brother’s green eyes. Later, he would hate how stupid he was, but in the moment he was so disconnected from Alex—so used to the lie working, so used to no suspicion—that he didn’t even think to wonder if Dean had seen the phone before it had been returned to him at the hospital.

“Wait—from the _bunker_?”

Dean said nothing, but a half-sneer turned his usually handsome face so dark and cruel that Sam might have actually been afraid of him, if he hadn’t known better.

“Why?” he pressed, still so very _stupidly_.

It was still another heartbeat before Dean answered, and when he did, the intensity of his anger was so potent in the low monotone of his voice that Sam could almost feel the air getting heavier around them.

“How long did you think it was going to last?”

It was only then that the first sparks of alarm began to tingle in the back of his mind. He tried to think of what to say, but Dean just kept going, emotion finally turning his voice into a crack of thunder in the otherwise silent room.

“I asked you a question, Sam! How long? A year? Ten years? Did you think I’d never find out, that I’m that _stupid_?”

Sam scrambled for words, all the moments when he’d imagined this, feared this, fleeting from his mind so that he couldn’t remember a damn word he had planned to say…not that it would have mattered anyway. He already knew nothing he said would matter if Dean ever found out.

“Dean, look, it’s not what you think—”

“Oh, what are you gonna tell me, Sam?” The sneer had seeped into his voice now, every word dripping with it. “That you found it? That he gave it to you? Well, you can shove your lies straight up your ass, because Cas told me everything. But he didn’t really need to, because you and I both know angel mojo is only good as long as the person whose head they screwed with doesn’t start questioning it. This little game was over as soon as I found the phone.” (1)

Sam forced himself to calm down, to breathe deeply, to handle this the way they would any other argument—by talking it out, being reasonable, explaining himself and his actions in a way that hopefully made sense to his brother.

“Dean,” he said, looking evenly into his eyes, hands splayed in front of him, “we didn’t have any other choice. You were dying—you _would_ have died. I did what I had to do to save you, just like we _always_ do.”

“No. No, this was _not_ like always, Sam. This was pretty freakin’ far from ‘always.’ We had another choice!”

“What, to have Cas kill you on the spot by trying to force the curse out?” he shouted back, as everything began crashing down inside his head, as he began to realize the weight of what he’d done, a shattering fantasy worse than any djinn could’ve conjured. “That wasn’t good enough, Dean! What we did was the only way to make sure you _survived_. Please, you have to hear me out.”

To his surprise, his brother began to turn away from him, back towards the door, and his voice had dropped again, this time sounding almost normal except for the coldness behind the careless drawl.

“Oh, believe me, I’ve spent the last seven hours from here to the bunker and back working through all your reasons. And I realized something: I don’t care. I don’t give a rat’s ass what you thought you were doing. You’ve pulled some pretty major crap over the years, but you get the gold freaking medal for this one, Sam. Congratulations on your A-plus psychology there, man. You really friggin’ missed your calling.”

“What?” Sam interrupted without even realizing it, completely thrown.

“You think I don’t know what all that texting was about, you selfish bastard?” Now the rage was back, full-force. “You gave me the world’s best sugar pill—a living, breathing person who _I_ thought could mean something to me, and you used it against me the whole damn time! You sent me those texts, pretending to be _him_ , telling me to drink more water and eat a friggin’ veggie omelette and all that other pile of steaming _crap_ you’ve been trying to force on me for years. He told me to let you win an argument, and I did, because I thought he wasn’t taking sides. He told me you were trying to do the right thing, that I should listen to you, and I believed him because why the hell shouldn’t I? And it was _you_ hiding behind the curtain the whole damn time, _you lying dick_!”

It had never been like that; Sam had never said anything as Alex that was intended to manipulate Dean, but he knew that there were times when he hadn’t been able to help it, when Dean had asked his advice and he’d given it honestly. He'd never told Dean directly as Alex to let Sam win an argument, but of course to Dean it would seem he had. He never realized how twisted it was until hearing it aloud like this.

But how could he say that? How could he admit to Dean or himself that the truth was so, so much worse? Because it was all true—he had watched as Dean had gotten healthier and more balanced, and he’d let him gripe through texts in order to understand his side better instead of just fighting over the bunker table about things, and he'd reminded him to drink water and eat something green every once in a while besides the lettuce on a burger. Being Dean’s Alex had made him happier too, of course it had. But in the end, it truly hadn't been about his own happiness. It had been about Dean’s, about giving him this person he’d come to want so quickly and completely, about giving him the kind of love he deserved that could make his life easier and brighter, and Sam knew that if he admitted that, he would have to admit to so much more, and, _god, how could he_?

“Dean, it wasn’t like that. That’s not why—”

“What is it—even after all this time, what I am still isn’t good enough for you?” Dean interrupted, as if he hadn’t even heard Sam try to speak, and his whole body was shaking as he took a step closer to the younger man, his eyes flashing with pain past the anger. “I’ve spent my whole _life_ trying to look out for you, trying to have your back and thinking you had mine, but I guess that doesn’t mean anything because it’s just _not enough_ , right?”

“What are you talking about? Of course it is!”

“You’ve always got to bitch—my beer, my music, whatever else you don’t like. You never could just accept this family for what it was. I can’t help but feel like that’s a little hypocritical, Sam, considering all the years you accused me of not caring about your little daydream of an apple-pie life with a law degree and a white picket fence. You were so pissed at me for wanting you to hunt, you barely spoke to me for two damn years while you were at school. Do you remember that, or are we just counting my failures here?”

That was a low blow, mentioning the life they both knew had been stolen from him, and they’d both owned phones during those two years, but Sam knew Dean, and he knew that this was what he did when he’d been hurt.

“Dean, just listen, okay? You’re wrong—”

“Do you even realize what you’ve done, what you tricked me into doing?” 

God help them both, there were real tears hazing Dean’s eyes now, his face flushed with humiliation, and Sam was stunned silent at the sight of it. Dean didn’t deserve to be embarrassed about anything; this was all on Sam.

“Whatever happened,” he said firmly, praying he could get through to him and take that shame out of his face, “it was because it was the only way. I'm sorry; really, I am, but I swear, whatever else happened, you _have_ to see that, Dean.”

The shock of pain as his brother’s fist crashed into his jaw sent him reeling into the desk and knocking over the old glass lamp, which shattered on the floor and covered Sam’s boots in glittering shards.

“ _We had sex, Sam_!” Dean’s voice thundered in his now-pounding head. “Do you realize how sick and twisted that is? And you knew it was me, the whole damn time! Are some kind of perverted _freak_?”

The throbbing in his cheek had nothing to do with the way his breath caught in his throat. Judging by the look that passed for an instant across Dean’s face, he hadn’t forgotten the past implications behind that word either. But he didn’t stay regretful. In a second, he looked like he was ready to punch Sam again at one wrong look.

He never did, though. Instead, he turned and only stopped in the doorway for a moment when Sam called out in a hoarse, pleading voice.

“Dean, wait!”

This time there was hardly any anger in Dean’s voice when he spoke, just a deep sort of hateful disappointment, and that was so much worse.

“I can’t even stand to look at you right now, Sam. I’m going home, and you’re not coming. I don’t want to hear from you, you got that? I have to…figure out how to get past this.”

Sam hoped Dean wouldn’t notice the tears forming in his own eyes, or that at least he would think it was because of the pain from the blow. He didn’t have to worry, though, because in the next moment, the door slammed shut and Dean was gone.

+++++++

(1) The idea of Cas’s “spell” being broken like this is based off the concept of the human soul being able to overcome angel possession, like Sam vs. Gadreel in _Road Trip_ (9x10), Dean vs. Michael in _Nihilism_ (14x10), etc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you have it, ladies and gents! The moment we all knew was coming finally hit 'em hard. But stick around, because there are four more updates after this and you never know what might happen. ;) Happy New Year and I'll see y'all in hopeful 2021. <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How's 2021 treating you guys so far?? I hope your week has been a good one! Thanks for all the comments on the previous chapter; they've made my first few days of 2021 all the brighter. <3 (And shoutout to the silent readers too--you're also appreciated!)

Nearly two months later, a woman in Milltown, Wyoming was arrested and issued a psychological evaluation after becoming manic at a dinner party with neighbors. She and her husband had left the room to get wine from the kitchen pantry, and while they were there one of the neighbors had walked in and his hand had “glowed bright purple” as he’d touched her husband’s chest. The neighbor had left the room without another word, and almost immediately her husband had told her that he wanted a divorce because he was in love with the wife of the other man. Whatever this new neighbor had done, the wife claimed, it had made her husband lose his mind. The husband, however, claimed there was no light and he’d just decided on his own that he was in love with another woman. Overall the whole thing stunk of either Too Much small-town drama and deceit mixed with a suburban wine night, or a really quirky legitimate case.

As Dean finished reading the couple of paragraphs of text on the Milltown news site, he rubbed his eyes and sat back in the chair, and his gaze automatically slid over to his phone’s dark screen nearby. The first few times, Dean had actually reached for the phone before he’d remembered that Alex didn’t need to know where he was going for a case, or that he’d found a really good movie on Netflix the night before, or that he was eating licorice whether Alex was going to judge him or not, because _Alex wasn’t real_. He was a figment of someone else’s imagination— _Sam’s_ imagination, and that made it all a thousand times worse—and therefore he _couldn’t_ care about Dean, or want him, or love him.

Dean realized where his train of thought was going, and shook himself out of it just as Castiel entered the bunker library. 

(Three weeks ago, Dean would have picked up his laptop and his beer and, with a dark shadow in his eyes and an aura of impenetrable silence, shoved coldly past the angel to the isolation of his own room. But things were different now, because three weeks ago the two of them had finally hashed it all out, after Dean had experienced a near-fatal wound on a solo case that had left him desperately praying for the angel’s help before he'd bled to death. Though Dean had made his friend work for it before he’d let him off the hook just on general principle, it had been easier than expected to forgive Cas for his part in the whole _Alex_ fiasco, partly because, in Dean’s opinion, the real blame lay with Sam who’d hatched the plan, and partly because it was _Cas_ and the little guy was genuinely repentant in the face of Dean’s fury. As pissed as he’d been in the beginning, he’d remembered as they’d talked that Cas was still an angel despite his heartfelt connection to humanity, and he didn’t always know where the line was. Sam, on the other hand, had known exactly where it was and hadn’t just crossed it, but had stomped on it and scribbled it out and set it on fire for good measure. So Cas and Dean had worked it out, and Dean held onto the fury but directed it fully at the one who deserved it most even if it killed him inside.)

With all of the last few months’ drama behind them, the older Winchester glanced over at Cas in greeting and then went back to the article, searching for the name of the town sheriff in the two vague paragraphs of print.

“Hey,” he grunted. “So I’ve gotta case. It’s about ten hours out, Milltown, Wyoming—woman claims her husband was brainwashed into divorcing her after a neighbor they barely knew hypnotized him during a dinner party. I’ll be there by morning, probably won’t be back for a couple of days.”

He knew after a few too many seconds of silence that they’d reached their limit; apparently it wasn’t all _completely_ behind them.

“Dean, we need to talk.”

He rolled his eyes and slammed the laptop shut, rising hastily and reaching for the last of his beer.

“About?”

“Sam.”

He rolled his eyes again, this time facing Castiel deliberately so he would be sure to see.

“Cas, we’ve talked about this—twice. And both times I told you: I’m not calling him, and I am _definitely_ not texting him. I feel like I’ve earned a medal or two just for working it all out with _you_ after your part in this whole hellfest. With him? It’s not gonna happen. So just let it go.”

“Dean, that ghoul—”

He interrupted with an irritated groan muffled by a swallow of beer and set the bottle back down a little too heavily.

“Cas, I’m fine.”

“You nearly weren’t,” came the exasperated response. “It could’ve killed you. What if you had lost consciousness before you could pray to me? You would have _bled out_ , Dean.”

Dean stopped where he was heading towards his room to fetch his duffel (still mostly packed from yesterday’s case) and shot his friend a cheeky smile emphasized with one raised index finger swipe through the air.

“But I didn’t.”

Cas huffed, his patience having worn out a week ago, when Dean had done exactly this and gotten out of discussing it for the third time. He turned and followed Dean’s movements across the room.

“Dean, you need to call him. This has gone on long enough. With everything you two have been through together, you have to find a way to work past this. You’ve said it yourself so many times before—you’re stronger together, in every way. Without Sam, you’re…”

Dean turned around slowly in the narrow hall and looked directly at the angel with a hint of challenge in his eyes.

“What?”

“You’re not…yourself.”

“Oh, come on,” Dean grunted a little melodramatically and began stalking toward his room again.

“And Sam was doing what he had to do, to save you. The curse—”

Dean spun around in the doorway of his room.

“That is not what this is about, Cas.”

The angel sighed a little and half-shrugged helplessly.

“I mean,” continued Dean, all hints of his fake good mood gone, “it’s bad, don’t get me wrong. Tricking anyone into sex is just plain disgusting no matter the circumstances, but I get it; it was a one-month stand versus probable death, and we didn’t know how much damage I could cause so he decided to take one for the team. I could live with that—not yet, but eventually, I could live with it. What I _can’t_ live with is what happened after—the texting and the-the whole… _thing_. Instead of doing what you had agreed, erasing our memories and letting us both move on—which I don’t necessarily agree with, but again, I get it—Sam decided he would use it to _his_ advantage. He decided to keep on tricking me, making me do things for Alex while he sat back and watched from behind his phone across the room. On top of the sex, _that’s_ what I can’t live with.”

“You make it seem like Sam was some evil monster controlling your mind,” Cas said, watching as Dean grabbed his duffel from off the floor. “Whatever his mistakes in all this, do you really believe he did what he did out of some kind of spite, to—to manipulate or _control_ you? Dean, Sam cares about you, more than anyone else. Don’t you think you should consider that and at least allow him to explain his motivations?”

“All I know,” replied the other man, as he shoved a few clean t-shirts into the bag, “is that he won an awful lot of arguments in those three months, and most of that was because I was trying to do what I thought Alex would want me to do, trying to be someone he would want me to be. So yeah, evil-monster-mind-control, whatever you want to call it, I’m not talking to him, not for a while, if ever. This is it for us, Cas. I mean it. So just stop bringing it up, okay?”

Castiel was silent for a long moment, a sign that he’d given up the argument for now, and then he asked,

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“Nah,” Dean replied, shoving an extra pair of jeans into the duffel’s side pocket. “Looks like a simple in-and-out, if it even is a case at all.”

“Are you sure?”

Dean zipped up the bag and tossed it over his shoulder before swiping his keys from the nightstand.

“Yeah, man. I’ll see you in a few days, okay? I’ll call if I need you, all right? Promise.”

“Well, okay,” Cas said hesitantly, following him out into the hall. “Just…be careful, Dean.”

He turned and shot his friend a reassuring half-smile.

“Always am.”

After he'd tossed his duffel in the back seat of the Impala, his phone caught his eye again where it lay in the passenger seat, and Dean gazed at it for a few heavy seconds before forcibly pulling his eyes away and turning the key in the ignition with a jerk. He'd never admit it to Cas—hell, he'd barely admit it to _himself_ —but for every one time he'd almost accidentally texted "Alex" in the last two months, there were three times when he'd almost texted Sam.

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel as he sped out of the bunker's garage and into the midday sunshine, and Dean successfully ignored how, if he were honest with himself, he might almost want to reach for that phone and find his brother's number. Instead, he recalled his anger, and what had caused it, and how the pain of that still burned in the empty space in his chest that Alex had just started to occupy, and he kept both hands on the wheel the whole way to Wyoming.

+++++++

It didn’t take a couples’ therapist to see why Mr. Colson had suggested divorce, in Dean’s opinion—not that he was placing the blame entirely with Mrs. Colson. When someone is that harsh and bad-tempered, it’s usually because they’re unhappy, and often that’s not all on them. From her unflattering description of her husband, Mrs. Colson was equally ready for a divorce but her ultra-conservative background trapped her in a tight refusal to end a marriage for any reason other than death. Dean would normally have just chalked it up to a blame game…unhappy wife blames gossipy neighbor for pressuring husband into divorce…except that she swore with her hand on a literal Bible that their newly-moved-in-neighbor had touched her husband’s chest and his eyes had flashed bright purple just before all the drama had gone down.

It wasn’t until he was heading for the door that she called out, haughtily with her own eyes narrowing,

“Don’t you FBI agents know how to coordinate?”

Dean turned around, shoving his little notebook (with absolutely nothing written down) back into his inner suit jacket pocket.

“What do you mean, ma’am?”

“Well, that other FBI agent was just here yesterday. He asked almost exactly the same questions. Why did you need to come here and make more notes? Don’t you people know what you’re doing?”

After Dean did little rambling about follow-ups, Mrs. Colson passed along the “other agent’s” business card, and Dean really, _really_ hated his luck sometimes. The name on the card was Agent Samuel Hill, and the phone number was one of the two he’d been resolutely _not_ texting for the last two months.

“Agent Hill told me he’s staying at the Budget Motel, off Fisher Creek Road, if I needed to reach him. Surely the FBI can afford to put its agents up in better rooms than that. I had to spray that couch with germ-killer after he left or I wouldn’t even have been able to sleep last night. Heaven knows what kind of diseases are growing in that filthy place.”

With a half-assed response, Dean shook himself and slipped the card into his pocket. Once on the front porch, he checked his watch; it was 9:15, exactly around the time he’d planned to go for breakfast after interviewing the witness, but suddenly he wasn’t in the mood for bacon and pancakes anymore.

+++++++

Hearing the knock over the sound of the faucet running, Sam wasn’t able to get out of the bathroom until after the door had already been opened. From the other side of the room he stopped short and could only look as dumbfounded as the newcomer when he saw him— _Dean_ —there in the morning light, looking as candid and yet striking as ever in his flannel and jeans, just like he’d looked the last time they’d seen one another, except now he appeared distant and uncomfortable. Sam's heart skipped a beat, but whether it was fear or something else he couldn't be sure.

Dean’s own gaze moved away from Sam’s reddening face across the crappy motel room back to the face of the person who’d opened the door.

“Oh,” said the guy, who clearly hadn’t gotten around to brushing his wild dyed-black hair that morning. “I thought you were the maid or something.”

Dean would usually have offered a sarcastic response, but he was a little distracted by the fact that in addition to not having brushed his hair, the guy had also not yet found his shirt in the pile of scattered clothing on the floor near the single queen bed.

“Uh,” came the embarrassed cough from across the room, “Trevor, this is my partner.”

The dude blinked, mouth hanging open as his eyes ran from the top of Dean’s head to his shoes.

“Um…partner?”

Sam aborted a roll of his eyes at his own error and tried to hide the flush of his cheeks.

“Work partner,” he clarified.

“Oh. Gotcha. Well, um, I’ll just—” He fished his shirt out of the clothing pile and slipped it on, and Dean stared at one of the three holes in the black material and wondered if they’d been cut on purpose to show off the tan skin underneath. “—leave you guys to your FBI stuff, then.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’d probably be best, thanks.”

The dude pushed his broad shoulders past Dean, who barely bothered moving out of the way, and he must’ve misunderstood the way Dean was now looking with narrow eyes at Sam, because he paused almost chest-to-chest with him in the doorway.

Dean noticed the uncomfortable closeness immediately, and when he shot a dark look, the other man smirked conceitedly and called back into the room, voice flitting with more allure than half the women that had ever flirted with Dean.

“Thanks for the fun night, Sam.”

With one last deliberate smile at Dean that was one step short of being outright challenging, the dude—Trevor, whatever—turned and walked up the sidewalk to disappear around a corner.

There was a heartbeat of silence broken only by the faint rattling of pipes somewhere in the walls, and then Sam turned his back deliberately on his brother to get a clean shirt from his bag on the desk.

“What are you doing here, Dean?”

Rather than answering, the older Winchester closed the door with one hard flick and said,

“So are we just going to pretend that didn’t happen?”

He saw Sam’s shoulders tense under his fresh t-shirt, and the younger man turned back around but didn’t look at him.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Dean considered it for a beat, and then said frankly,

“No.”

Sam’s mouth tightened and he leaned against the desk, resting his hands on his knees.

“Guess we are, then. I take it this means you heard about the case.”

Dean wasn't sure he was satisfied with that, but then again, he wasn’t exactly in the mood to push it either.

“Yeah,” he replied, also not attempting to meet the other man’s eyes. “Husband has the hots for the neighbor and wants a divorce, wife is angry, blames another neighbor—doesn’t really seem like a case, except…”

“…except instead of blaming the new woman, she’s blaming a random guy she says cast a spell on her husband right before it happened.”

This was doable, talking about the case. They were naturals at this. Not awkward at all.

“Exactly.” He shifted slightly on his feet. “I went and talked to her. Real lovely lady. I can totally see why she’s shocked about her husband wanting a divorce.”

There was no sound and he still wasn’t looking, but he could feel that Sam was at least wanting to smile at that. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that either.

“According to her, I’m sure she told you,” his brother said, “the guy’s name is Henry Devereux, and he just moved in to the house two doors down. But I went over there yesterday, and there was nobody home and no car in the driveway. The neighbor on the other side told me his car’s been missing since that night. I broke in, but didn’t find anything except a bunch of cardboard moving boxes—all empty.”

“So a lack of hex bags and spell books means he’s probably not a witch, then,” said Dean thoughtfully, almost—almost—forgetting about their whole situation in the moment.

“Probably not,” Sam agreed, and it seemed he was experiencing the same sensation of familiar almost-ease. “I was heading over to the police station this morning to find out what they think and maybe hack into the traffic cams to find out where he went, or at least the direction he was headed in.”

“Good.” 

For a moment, he really had completely forgotten, and was one step away from pulling out his keys and driving them both to the station. He caught himself well in time to avoid any additional awkwardness, though.

“You do that,” he said instead, “and I’ll go to his job, see if I can find out anything there. Mrs. Grumpy said it was a flower shop, right?”

“Yeah, on North Main.”

“Okay. Let me know what you find out.”

He started to leave, but one syllable halted him in his tracks.

“Dean—”

Easily recognizing the tone, he spun around and cut his brother off before he could start.

“Sam, you and I both know how this works. Neither of us is going to leave until we know what’s going on here, so there’s no sense in even bringing it up.”

“I can handle this on my own,” came the inevitable, quiet, response. “You don’t need to stay, Dean.”

“We don’t know what this thing is yet,” he argued unflinchingly. “It could be nothing, or it could be a witch, or anything else with possible mind-control powers. I know _I’m_ not leaving, so that means it’ll have to be you.”

Sam’s jaw twitched, and he didn’t say anything.

“That’s what I thought,” Dean said, pulling his keys from his pocket. “So I’m going to his job, and you go to the station, and we’ll meet back here and figure this thing out. Okay?”

Without giving his brother time to answer, he left the way he’d come, slamming the squeaky door a little too loudly as he did.

+++++++

Turns out, they didn’t need to meet back at the motel to figure anything out. It was hard to say which of them was more relieved that the case was progressing so quickly, but the conversation with the chief of police—

_“This is a small town, Agent Hill, and I’ve known Betty Colson for a long time. Whatever her marriage problems, she’s a dignified woman. So when she just kept raving about this new neighbor doing something to her husband, I took a little time to check him out, just to be double-sure. Only I can’t seem to find a Henry Devereux anywhere. It’s like he just dropped into town one day clear out of nowhere—no credit cards, nothing. Paid cash for the house and all. Very odd.”_

—and the conversation with the flower shop owner—

_“For what it’s worth, Agent Morris, Henry has this amazing ability to know exactly what the customer wants and needs, no matter who they’re buying flowers for. It’s like he’s a magician or something. When I ask, he always says he ‘can see it in the strands of the person’s soul.’ It’s super weird, actually, but hey, if it gets customers to my store, I never question it. If you’re looking for him, he’s got a cabin near Medicine Bow Peak that he’s gone to a few times since he started working here. I’ve got the address on file; he gave it to me because there’s no phone up there. I know. Weird.”_

—and that was that. One quick call to compare notes, and they agreed to meet at the address two hours away after Dean had his breakfast and Sam picked up his things from the room. No unnecessary speaking, no meetings where they would both avoid eye contact, no pretending like they were still family at all, just good old-fashioned hunting the monster.

It was hard to say which one of them was more unhappy about that, but Dean shoved away any and all softer emotions and buried them under a festering grudge, and Sam packed all of his sadness and pain neatly into a lonely corner to sit until the weight of it would crush him later, and that was that.

+++++++

The cabin was tiny and looked like it hadn’t been touched in decades, much less lived in, but the light from inside shone through the curtained windows clearly even in the late-afternoon sunshine.

Dean and Sam crept along the side of the old log building, guns drawn, muscles tensed, their issues firmly and professionally ignored in the face of a hunt. Sam stood back and allowed Dean to dart to the other side of the front door so that they both covered it, and their eyes met for the first time all day, but it didn’t mean anything except for the job. There was a silent count, and then Dean kicked in the old door (which gave way pathetically easily), and they rushed inside one after the other.

It was almost hilarious, how quickly their guns were ripped out of their hands in a split second, and Sam had to blink twice before he realized his back was pressed against the door they’d just entered, while Dean’s was pressed against the right wall. His brother was struggling, trying to move his arms, but Sam didn’t bother—a pair of glowing purple eyes sparked only feet away, holding them in place without even having to come near them. The figure was middle-aged, tall and broad-shouldered and pale, his hair nearly black and as long as Sam’s, clothes a strange combination of modern jeans and shoes with a medieval-looking tunic and a fraying straw hat. 

“Henry Devereux,” Sam said clearly, his own eyes flashing dangerously at their latest assailant.

The man lowered his hand and his eyes shifted back to a an eerie pale blue, but Sam and Dean remained fixed where they were.

“Hunters,” he said in a smooth and soft-spoken tone, and then added with a weary sort of acceptance, “I was afraid someone would notice. I tried to ignore it, I really did, but you have to believe me—I just couldn’t help it.”

“You couldn’t help putting a spell on a guy that made him and his wife split?” Dean called out ruthlessly, still struggling against the invisible bonds.

The man blinked twice, quickly, and took a couple of steps toward Dean, but rather than doing anything, he just stared at him for a little too long until his head tilted to the side in a way that reminded them both instantly of Cas.

Dean glared at the cool eyes, feeling strangely like his mind was being opened and the contents scattered in the air for judgment.

“It wasn’t a spell,” Henry said at last. “I suppose you could call it that, if you didn’t know any better, but a spell would imply I did something to change him or his will, which I didn’t.”

“No?” Sam pulled his attention back to himself, reserving his energy once he realized trying to distract him wouldn’t work to ease up the binding spell.

“No,” said the man calmly, walking with apparent nonchalance to him now. “I could have, if it had come to that. But all I had to do was give him a moment of clarity when he looked at the woman he was supposed to love. The rest he did on his own. That’s usually how it works—once someone sees how happy they can truly be, they almost always choose to fight for it.”

“So that’s your call to make, huh?” Sam baited him, hoping either he or Dean could come up with something in the meantime. “You thought they should divorce, so you made it happen. You don’t like something, so you think you can just change it even if it’s not yours to change.”

The man was staring at him in that odd way now, and at the closeness Sam recognized something seemingly out of place in his gaze—sympathy.

“Of course,” the man said, seeming half-distracted. “Surely you would understand better than anyone, given the work you’ve chosen. Sometimes you must interfere to help your friends when you know they need it, even if they don’t know they’re your friends at the time.”

“Friends?” Dean shouted, drawing his gaze. “I’m not so sure Mrs. Colson would call you a friend right now, pal. In fact, I’m pretty sure she wants to scratch your eyes out and serve them at her _next_ fancy dinner party.”

Henry seemed amused, though it was unclear whether it was at the statement or just at Dean himself.

“She won’t soon,” he replied enigmatically.

“What are you?” Sam demanded, categorically going through every known monster in his head but finding nothing to compare.

Icy blue eyes looked down to the floor, as though debating, and then they met Sam’s gaze evenly.

“I can see,” he said quietly, “that you are a good man. Despite the guilt you carry, your heart is merciful and your soul is pure. I would like to be your friend, too, Sam Winchester. I can see that you need one right now.”

Sam felt himself almost flinch at that, because even though there was no way this stranger could know about the last couple of months, his words still rang painfully true at the memory of a dozen lonely motel rooms and unfamiliar bedmates.

“I will tell you whatever you want to know,” Henry continued with a small smile, holding one hand out like an invitation. “I am the half-breed son of a human and a faery. I have spent the last hundred years in a Finnish forest with them and her people, and my tribe has sent me out to learn more about my father’s world. And even though I can now understand better why my mother’s affection for humans is so strong, I am shocked by the amount of misery I see in you.”

“What do you mean ‘see?’” Sam pressed, remembering what Dean had told him about the flower shop owner’s statement.

“I can see the spirit of all living things,” he replied willingly. “I see the colors that define a soul, and from the soul come invisible strings that glitter like they’re covered in diamond dust. These strings connect people, whether they know it or not, and the colors of each strand between two people shows how strong their connection is—how similar their energy is. Many times, the people closest to you are those with a similar color at both ends, but sometimes, for some reason or another, a person is close to someone who does not share their energy well, or is far away from the ones who share their energy the best. When that happens, your soul is cut off from that good energy and becomes dim, and you become sad and lost. This happens so much in your world, I’m assuming because you cannot see the spirits of others like we can. You can only guess who to be close to and hope to be lucky. I can understand why so many are unhappy. I just wanted to help.”

“So you _‘saw Mr. Colson’s spirit’_ and you thought you’d play matchmaker with him and the neighbor?” Dean summarized, obviously unimpressed.

“I might have resisted, if it was only that,” replied Henry, unbothered by his tone. “But Mrs. Colson’s spirit connected well with the husband of the other woman, and how could I resist a scenario so perfect? If they work it out right, and I believe they will, all four of them will be much happier in the near future.”

Sam could feel that Dean wasn’t buying it—he didn’t need to be able to see his soul or whatever to feel that—but for himself, he found that he was more confused than anything. Usually by this time, the monster was admitting to being a monster. This weird fairy-godmother talk was throwing him off his game…not to mention the giant straw hat was a little distracting too.

“Well, if you’re such a humanitarian,” Dean’s sarcastic voice broke into his thoughts, “why don’t you let us go so we can talk this out?”

Henry took three steps back, the aged floorboards groaning and bending slightly under his feet, and he looked back and forth between the brothers once, twice, and then a third time. The smile that formed on his mouth could have been either evil or good, depending on what he meant by it.

“I’ll let you go,” he promised. “You have my word, Dean Winchester.”

But instead of doing it, he walked over to Dean and placed a broad hand over the center of his chest.

“Hey,” snapped the older Winchester, trying once more to break the holding spell on his arms, “no touching the merchandise. Didn’t your _fairy tribe_ teach you that you don’t go around fondling people?”

But Henry simply smiled at him, his eyes and hand glowing purple for a moment, before he crossed the room and did the same to Sam.

Then the strange man stepped back again and looked expectantly at them.

After a few moments, Sam looked at Dean questioningly, but his brother’s expression was equally as confused and twice as irritated. They both looked back at Henry, whose own expression had now fallen, as though he’d been looking for something to happen when they had looked at one another. Then, his face brightened again, and he appeared to be in awe.

“ _Oh_ ,” he breathed, looking back and forth between them. “I see! You both already know.”

Both Dean and Sam narrowed their eyes at his antics, completely lost.

“Look,” said Sam a little impatiently, “if you’re going to kill us, or something, can you please just do it?”

“We’ve done the whole _hexed_ thing too many times now,” Dean agreed, “and it’s all just gotten a little old, to be honest, so if ya don’t mind skipping the part where you try to get us to kill each other, or make us hallucinate until we kill ourselves, or whatever…well, that’d be just swell.”

Henry was biting his lower lip, as though pondering something, but at their words he smiled and laughed softly in amusement.

“I don’t always know what’s best,” he said, like a confession or an apology, “but I can only do what I feel is right.”

“Oh, great,” Dean grunted. “Why is it every time somebody says that, it usually means something bad is coming?”

“Sometimes you have to dig through the dirt to discover the gold,” came the sage answer, as Henry began to step slowly toward Sam.

“Wonderful,” replied Dean, "thanks for that.”

By now, Henry was standing a breath away from Sam, his clear pale eyes meeting the changeable hazel with a peculiar warmth.

“It’ll have to be a full spell,” he said, almost a whisper, as if the human knew what he was talking about. “I can see what happened, Sam—not all of it, not clearly—but enough. I’m sorry that you’ve suffered so much, especially the last months. Being soulmates is the rarest and most fulfilling connection two people can have, and no one should ever be denied the love of theirs, especially as necessary as yours is to you.”

Sam felt his eyes widen. Before he could make sense of what the guy meant, Henry turned to look at Dean with the same gentle fondness that made no sense given the circumstances.

“You have every right,” he told him kindly, “to feel hurt and betrayed, Dean Winchester.”

Sam swallowed in shame as he watched Dean’s jaw twitch and his eyes darken, the guilt that had been eating away at him since Virginia taking another big piece.

“Your feelings are not wrong,” Henry continued to his brother, assuringly, “but they may perhaps be…misguided. You are as good a man as Sam is, and I am sorry you felt the loss of both a lover and a brother all at once. You are very strong to have carried such pain and yet maintained your courage and valor. But I am more sorry than anything that you cannot yet see the truth of it all—that the love you have denied is far greater than you could ever have hoped for."

He turned back to Sam and seemed to be speaking to them both when he vowed,

"I will do my very best to help you both. You have my word."

Then, before either brother could process what they'd heard, Henry Devereux placed his hand flat against Sam's chest once again.

“I can see your connection,” he explained at Sam’s alarmed look, and his gaze cut meaningfully toward Dean. “The strand that binds you is dim now, but never before have I seen one like both of yours—one that’s the exact same shade from one soul to the other, as if the components of your very beings are the most perfect fit. It’s a beautiful thing, Sam Winchester, and it will shine again. Everything will be fine.”

“Hey! Whatever you’re thinking over there, Tinker Bell, you better think twice because I swear—!”

Dean’s shouting was cut off as Henry’s eyes sparked once again, this time the magic so powerful it spread down to the hand on Sam’s chest, lighting up the whole space bright lavender and creating a high-pitched ringing that hurt Dean’s ears. He felt the wall and floor shaking as the light blinded him, and then his legs fell out from under him and everything went from purple to black.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how common it is to put a note at the beginning of every chapter, but I just like saying hi to you guys. Hi! x)

When Dean opened his eyes again, the room was dark except for a new fire blazing in the old fireplace. He grunted at the lingering pounding of his head, still hearing a slight ring in his ears, and pushed himself onto his hands and knees. Once his eyes finally cleared, he looked frantically around but saw no one for a moment—until he realized the sharp, muffled sounds above the crackles of the flames were coming from his brother, who was curled up at the base of the wall several feet away.

“Sam!”

He shoved himself to his feet and rushed toward the shaking form, but Sam pulled his sleeve out of his mouth with some effort and threw both hands up to stop him cold in his tracks.

“No! _No_ , Dean, don’t come any closer,” he gasped, eyes wild and full of terror like Dean had only seen a few times before in their lives.

Dean glanced around the room, just to confirm that yes, that freaky young Gandalf was gone; it was only the two of them now.

“Okay," he said, maintaining his calm, "okay, Sam, what happened? What did he do to you? Tell me and we can fix this.”

Sam, once he saw his brother was obeying him, appeared to be unable to say anything more as he dropped one arm to wrap around his stomach and curled in on it. His other arm returned to stifle the cut-off cries of what seemed to be pure agony, and Dean watched with rising fear as his brother bent forward on his knees so that he was nearly fetal on the floor.

“Sam!” Dean shouted to regain his attention, all semblance of calm vanished, and he started to move forward again.

“ _Stop_. Stop,” Sam panted, pushing himself up to look at his brother, the flickering firelight reflecting off the beads of sweat across his brow. “Please, Dean, you have to go…you have to get out of here now…please, go…”

“Are you kidding me? No way, Sam.”

“Th-the curse,” came the pleading, broken words, “the witch’s curse you had—he gave it to me. Please, Dean, you have to get out of here.”

Dean felt his blood go icy in his veins. As he struggled to process, Sam shuddered at his feet, bowing forward again as a keening sound tore from his throat.

“No, no, he couldn’t have, Sam,” the older Winchester argued, shaking off the onslaught of emotions that threatened to take control of his voice. “The curse took days, and it was never like this.”

“Close enough,” Sam snapped at him, face contorting in a fight to control the pain. “Must be his version of the spell, the fairy version. It doesn’t matter, Dean. You have to go, now.”

Dean crouched down, taking Sam’s arm roughly.

“We’ll find someone,” he said, aware somewhere in the back of his mind that he sounded desperate. “I’ll take you back to town, find that-that Trevor guy, if you feel like you can do it without hurting him—”

“No, Dean!” The younger man ripped his arm out of his grasp and pushed up closer to the wall. “It’s _you_ —I— _it_ needs you. It can _only_ be you. I can feel it.”

Dean felt his mouth fall open at that, but Sam didn’t give him time to reply.

“You have to leave,” his brother pled, unshed tears making his eyes seem even brighter against the flushed skin of his face. “Dean, I don’t have much time. I can’t fight it much longer. _Please_ …”

The sound that cut off his voice this time was a wrenching sob like Dean hadn’t heard him make in years, as he folded so that both arms wrapped tightly around his middle and his eyes squeezed shut, his body pressing closer into the wall and away from Dean. One of Sam’s hands fumbled up to press over his chest, above his heart, and Dean watched as his face went white and contorted in with barely-controlled pain. He wasn’t going to survive the night like this, maybe not even a few hours.

That thought whipped Dean out of his own head, and he had to face it; he already knew what his choice would be. There was no reason to pretend this was a struggle.

He glanced around the room and spotted the mattress lying in front of the fireplace; for a split second he wondered if it had been there when they’d arrived earlier, but quickly decided it didn’t matter. It looked clean, a plush white with no discoloration or rips, and that was good enough for him.

“Sammy, come on,” he ordered, grabbing his brother’s arm again and pulling it away from his stomach.

“N-no, Dean—”

“Do you wanna die?” Dean nearly shouted at him, yanking him up so that they were even, but at the twisted pain and horror he saw in his brother’s eyes, all the frustration drained out of him. “Listen, I know what I said before, and I know how it’s been since, but I am _not_ about to let you die over this, okay? So you can either help me out here, or I can drag you over to that mattress.”

At the way those word sounded out loud, Dean felt himself go pale and a wave of distress made him feel cold.

“Please, Sammy,” he found himself begging, looking into those frightened eyes and knowing his looked about the same, “don’t make me do that, okay? I _can’t_ do that. Come on, you gotta move, man.”

Sam shook his head, his whole body trembling under Dean’s hands, and he spoke in a voice that reminded the older brother of when he had been an undersized five-year-old with nightmares he couldn’t remember, and Dean had been an overly mature nine-year-old who just wanted to keep him safe from them.

“I don’t want to do this to you again,” Sam said, eyes stubborn but helpless. “Dean, I-I don’t want to hurt you again like this, all right? I _don’t want_ to do this to you.”

He tried to wrestle out of his brother’s grasp, but he was getting so weak now, already, and he couldn’t even manage to get one hand out of Dean’s grip.

“ _Sam_!” Dean barked out, forcibly stilling him. “Listen to me! It’s okay.”

Unexpectedly, or maybe totally expectedly, Dean felt a rush of affection and protectiveness for his ever-noble brother that momentarily overwhelmed everything else, as Sam continued trying to fight, to protect him, after everything, even with all the agony he was suffering in this moment, even knowing he would die soon if they didn't do something.

“It’s okay,” he repeated, this time softer, as he let one wrist go to hold Sam’s head up when he started to curl in on himself again. “It’s okay, Sam, all right? This isn’t your fault. I’m going to take care of you, man. You know that.”

The younger hunter blinked at him through hazy eyes that had just the tiniest flicker of hope in them. Dean locked onto that flicker and didn’t dare look away.

“I’m here,” he said. “Just let me take care of you. We’ll figure the rest out later. We always do, right?”

A shuddering breath caught, and Sam’s eyes softened, and Dean took that as his go-ahead.

“Come on, little brother,” he grunted under Sam’s weight as he tugged him up.

Sam leaned heavily on Dean, unable even to see straight, much less walk, under the cramping, blinding pain in his abdomen and chest. After a few steps, Dean let him fall carefully, and his knees hit something soft and comfortable. He rolled onto his back and the pain made him curl up, but he opened his eyes in time to see Dean already had his t-shirt off and was fumbling with the button of his jeans at the foot of the plain mattress.

“Dean,” he gasped out, unsure of what he was even going to say.

His brother stopped what he was doing and looked up, and god, he’d been right before; Sam really was a perverted freak, because this was even worse than the last time, and still he couldn’t help but be awed at how gorgeous his brother looked in the raging firelight. It danced on half his face, outlining his lashes, his cheekbone, his jawline, his full lips, the plains of his chest just like he remembered from seven months ago. The fire gave his skin a golden glow that made Sam’s fingers itch to trace it over and over. Dusty green eyes were wide and hyperalert as they watched Sam expectantly, his broad shoulders rising and falling too quickly from the adrenaline. Even without a curse, Sam knew the sight would’ve turned him on; the idea of it haunted him enough in his dreams these days. Dean deserved so much better than this, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from _wanting_.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, feeling his face twist not from pain this time, but with longing and the intense guilt that came with it.

“Hey—” A hand gripped his knee half-thinkingly. “—this is not your fault, Sam. Okay? We’re going to get you taken care of here. It’s just a little romp in the sheets, right? A little quickie to blow off some steam. People do it all the time.”

Sam couldn’t stop the slightly hysterical huff of laughter at his brother’s attempt at normalcy, and abruptly he realized how obvious his pulsing cock must be through his jeans from Dean’s angle. He groaned, partly in dismay and partly from the white-hot throbbing of it, and tried to turn more onto his side to hide himself.

“Whoa, hey, no.” 

A firm hand grabbed at his thigh and he was too shaky to resist being turned onto his back.

“We’ve gotta get those jeans off,” Dean’s voice continued, the breathlessness taking away from the attempted playfulness. “You don’t think I’m the only one that needs to be pantsless here, do you?”

Sam couldn’t reply, the shame stealing his voice and heating up his face; he felt sure, capable fingers snap the button and undo the zipper, but then the hands disappeared.

“You wanna do the rest, while I finish mine here, Sam? Got me doing all the work.”

Sam grimaced but focused only on sitting up enough to shimmy out of the soft denim.

Dean got his jeans undone and was just looping his thumbs into the waist when Sam yanked his own off his ankles and tossed them aside along with his boots and socks. As Sam squirmed and shivered against the mattress, his legs fell apart to display the wet spot on the front of his boxers where they were tented. Dean felt his throat go dry; he hadn’t wanted to admit it—hell, he hadn’t even wanted to _think_ about it—but his wet dreams the last few months hadn’t been about girls in G-strings. They’d been about this, exactly this: these long legs wide open, cock straining against old boxers, craving to be touched while Dean took off his own clothes slowly and watched.

Dean swallowed, forced his eyes away, and pushed his jeans and boxers off violently, but there was no way to hide it anymore when his cock was freed and it was already hardening just at the sight of Sam. He took it in his own hand and wondered why it was he didn’t have nearly as much embarrassment as he’d thought, admitting it to himself. After Virginia, Sam’s body turned him on; there was just no way around it.

A keening noise and his brother’s crying out his name brought him back into the moment.

“Yeah, yeah, okay, Sammy, I got you,” he said. “Here, we’ve gotta get these off, right?”

He reached for them, but Sam pushed his hand away with a panting, “No, no, not yet, Dean, please.”

He pulled back like he’d been struck, and nodded even though Sam wasn’t looking at him.

“Okay. We take this at your pace, Sam. Lube in your car?”

Sam shook his head jerkily and dug without looking into his jacket pocket, producing a small plastic bottle half-empty.

Dean was thrown momentarily by the implications and the memory of _Trevor_ from that morning, but recovered enough to chuckle without any real feeling.

“Prepared for anything, huh? I’m impressed, boy scout.”

Sam didn’t respond, but he didn’t really expected him to. His little brother was getting pale now, the sweat soaking through the front collar of his thin button-down, and Dean didn’t waste a second snapping the lid off (and breaking it accidentally) to squirt it over his fingers. He crawled up onto the mattress, because it was easier on his aching knees, and started to reach back—

“No, Dean, wait,” came a panting gasp, as a pair of big, strong hands grabbed at him, one at his arm and the other at his waist.

He stopped.

“Sam, I’ve got to. It’ll just be a second, I swear. Going in dry is not a good idea for either of us, trust me—”

“No. Dean,” Sam interrupted, shifting closer to him, and he stayed quiet at the effect of those dewey eyes so close to his hard cock, “ _I_ need _you_ inside. I need you in me. Need you to come in me.”

One shaking, sweaty hand fell from his arm to his bare thigh, and Dean felt his cock twitch at all the sensations hitting him at once. The truth was he was much more comfortable with the idea of _being_ taken rather than taking Sam like this, when his little brother couldn’t control it. But Sam wasn’t looking at him in fear or doubt; he was looking at him like he was the only thing that could save him. And if he was, he was going to damn well do his best to make it worth anything Sam suffered. Just like always.

Catching his breath deliberately, he gritted his teeth and moved back off the mattress. He pulled on Sam’s legs gently, getting him far enough down that he could reach his hole easily. It was only then that he realized he was shaking too.

“Sam,” he said, his own voice rough and a little weak, “we need to get these off.”

He touched the waistband of the boxers.

Sam’s breath shuddered and he nodded, pushing up to lift his hips.

Dean pulled the boxers down and off in one smooth slide, and forced himself not to look where he really wanted to, as he used his right hand to lift up Sam’s legs and the left to finger around his hole. An intrusive memory struck him of one afternoon when he'd done exactly this to Alex...Alex, who was really Sam all along, whose pretty pink hole was exactly the same as when he'd traced his fingers around it before pressing inside on that soft bed in Virginia. His breath was just as heavy now as it had been then, his tongue licking his lips involuntarily.

At the simple touch, Sam bit back a cry, and his hips canted while his hole tightened around nothing. Dean was startled by the intensity of his reaction, and froze to watch as Sam, desperate for stimulation, hiked up his button-down to tug at one of his own nipples while his other hand flew to tug at his cock. The light from the fire rippled over his chest and cut through the sharp angles of him. He’d lost weight in the last couple of months, the bones of his ribs and hips sticking out more than last Dean had seen.

Even with that unhappy thought, Dean’s breath trembled out of him at the sight of Sam touching himself like this, his lips parting as Sammy’s hips continued to thrust gently and his back arched, his brother’s breathing stinted and filled with tiny whimpers.

Dean swallowed again; this time it stuck in his throat, and he pushed his index finger inside with almost no resistance. Delicious heat tightened around it, and he didn’t wait to push in his middle finger alongside.

A sobbing cry pierced through his daze, but he didn’t fear his brother was in any pain, not with how loose he was and how he kept twisting toward the touch.

“ _Dean_!”

He stopped again—he couldn’t help it. How many times had he heard that voice cry out for him? How often had it been out of fear or pain or anger? This time it was none of those things; this time it was pure, fervent arousal that tore his name from Sam’s lips. To hear it now, like this, knowing he was the only person who could help and that Sam was actually letting him, _begging_ for him to help, still trusting him after so long apart, was probably the best thing he’d ever heard, even better than Led Zeppelin at midnight or the Impala’s newly-tuned engine. He hated this, hated that Sam's choice had been torn away in this, but he knew enough to recognize that it wasn't all the curse. That outcry had just been _Sam_ , calling for him just like he always did when he needed him.

Dean scissored his fingers once, feeling the tight walls give, and then Sam was talking again, breathlessly,

“I’m ready. Dean, I’m ready. Do it, please. Please, Dean, oh, god—”

“Are you sure?” Dean asked, a little too roughly, knowing that if he did anything to hurt Sam now he’d never get over it.

But Sam was nodding, and his hole was slicked up and gaping a little when Dean pulled his fingers out. So he started to line himself up, holding Sam behind the knees to get a good angle, but then he stopped as a thought suddenly struck him.

Sam was cursed, and even though it wasn’t exactly the same, he knew what that felt like. He knew that Sam had tried his dead-level best to maintain Dean’s dignity when it had been him desperate and moaning for it. And if either of them needed and deserved that dignity, it was Sam.

“Dean?” his brother rasped, raising his head a little to look at him, a touch of dread in his face. “Wh-what are you waiting for?”

Sam unconsciously tried to push closer, to get to the heat of Dean’s cock, but the older man let him go and rubbed at a jutting hipbone.

“Turn over, Sam. Come on, that’s it, little brother, turn over for me.”

Sam was too out of it to understand what he wanted, but he did his best to obey, shaking arms getting him up and on his left side. Dean stopped him there, so that he was facing the warm and bright fire. Sam stretched his arms up, one going under his head to support his neck while the other held onto the edge of the mattress; Dean skillfully pushed up Sam’s right leg under the knee, so that his pelvis was nearly flat down. Dean took a handful of his ass so he could get to that perfect hole and was satisfied when he saw Sam thrusting his unseen cock into the pillowy mattress fabric, his face buried halfway in his arm and his whimpers muffled.

Dean finally took a second to look at himself, and wondered how long he would be able to last when he realized after so many months of going untouched by anyone, after daydreaming about Alex all that time while they texted, after the dreams that haunted him even now, after getting Sam’s hole all ready for him…he looked as horny as he felt under the circumstances, his cock flushed red and his sack tight and heavy underneath. He took a couple of breaths to calm down, and then got himself up on the mattress, torso upright while he sat on his knees with his cock level with Sam’s hole.

He licked his lips and pressed in, and the way it tightened and loosened around him, the burning heat, the fierce little sob that ripped out of Sam’s throat…it was all enough to make him dizzy and overwhelmed. He bent his head and shut his eyes, one hand sliding up and down Sam’s back soothingly (still clad in his jacket and plaid button-down) while the other probably left red fingerprints on his more exposed thigh.

Once he had calmed a bit, he pulled out and pushed back in gently. 

Sam mewled, the muscles of his back shifting as he squirmed, and Dean kept up the same slow pace, watching himself go in and out, until—

“Harder, Dean, go harder a-and faster, please. You feel so good, make me so full, it’s so good, _please_.”

Dean exhaled through his nose and prayed to God or whoever that this really was what Sam wanted and not just the curse talking. Then he gripped Sam’s thigh, supported himself on his hip, and let himself go at the pace he really wanted.

Sam’s cries were low, cut off grunts and growls as Dean pounded into him almost exactly like he had that very first time, all those months ago, his balls slapping with each thrust inside and Sam’s whole body jolting from how deep it went. It wasn’t going to last long for either of them, they both knew. As Dean’s breathing got harsher and Sam’s cock demanded more friction into the mattress, the older brother reached out and palmed some of the hair out of Sam’s face.

Sam turned his head slightly to meet Dean’s eyes, and for the very first time, he felt like his brother was really, truly looking at him—all of him, not just Sammy or Alex, but both. There was definitely forgiveness in that warm green gaze, as well as that look that had always been just for him in moments when they bared their souls for each other like they never did for anyone else.

Dean’s thrusts slowed down for a few seconds as he took in that look, like unspoken words no one else had ever or would ever understand outside of the two of them. It resonated in both their souls, and then Sam turned away to shut his eyes and just _feel_ , and Dean sped up so that he was barely even pulling halfway out, frantically seeking release in the tightness.

Sam moaned brokenly, the sound loud even over all the other sounds filling the space, and he reached down with his right hand to grip Dean’s fingers on his thigh. His cock was being worked into the soft mattress with each one of Dean’s movements, and even if not, just the feel of being pounded was going to be enough.

Dean felt the sweet pressure start to form in the pit of his stomach; he stretched to take a handful of Sam’s hair at the base of his neck and sped up impossibly faster for a few seconds before his world exploded into whiteness.

Sam felt Dean come hot in him, his brother bending and burying his face into his shoulder with a sharp, hoarse shout, the sound interrupted by full-body shudders as his cock kept pulsing in Sam’s hole.

Sam couldn’t take it anymore, because in the same second that Dean came, the curse vanished from his body without a trace, leaving him feeling light and full of relief. With Dean’s cock still inside him, his hole tightening greedily around it, he pumped his hips into the mattress three times and then came as well, body relaxing almost immediately afterward, the only sounds left the fire and their breathing.

One of Dean’s hands stroked through his hair a little shakily, the other arm wrapping around his torso in a strange hug as his jaw rested unselfconsciously on Sam’s shoulder blade. Sam was almost overcome by the temptation to sink into the touch, to close his eyes and just feel those strong and dependable arms around him, to breathe out months’ worth of stress and loneliness and hurt and just feel _Dean_ —Dean, who had always been his rock in the storm, the one person for whom he would hand over his soul without hesitation or regret, the man whose name had been on the tip of his tongue while other men had been using him these past few weeks. It took every ounce of his self-control not to lace his fingers with his brother’s on his sternum and just pretend for a moment that they slept like this every night and woke up together every morning.

That’s when Sam couldn’t even try to deny it anymore. He was in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh. I think we've hit a crossroads here, boys.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this one's long because it's the big one! This is basically the final chapter (next week I'll post an epilogue though, so that'll be the *official* ending). Would you believe I almost forgot to post this part tonight?? (In my defense, I took the Special Agent Entrance Exam for the Secret Service this morning after studying all month for it, and I feel like I've been in a drowsy daze ever since. xD) ANYWAYS, I really really hope you guys are happy with how I wrap things up. Here we go...!

Dean barely even remembered pulling out and collapsing on his back beside Sam, and he had no idea how many minutes he’d just been lying there, one hand resting on his own chest and the other on Sam’s jacket-clad arm. He had his eyes open the whole time, though, he knew, just staring blindly at the cobweb-covered ceiling and coming to terms with a lot of major things in his life.

He only stirred when Sam finally moved, and he only got the focus to speak after his brother was already sliding on his boxers and jeans.

“What’re you doing?” he asked, his voice sounding a little slurred to his own ears as he watched.

“What does it look like? I’m getting dressed.”

Okay, that was fine. He could understand the discomfort, plus the fire was going out and its was getting a little chilly. What _wasn’t_ fine was the tone Sam had used to say it—dark, morose, and definitely not like a guy who’d just come into a mattress in front of a fireplace after being rung hard.

He sat up and pulled on his own jeans and t-shirt, and was just zipping up when Sam picked up the bottle of lube and hurled it into the dimming fire.

Dean looked from the melting plastic to his brother for an explanation, but Sam was busy putting on his socks and didn’t pay him any attention.

“Sam—”

“I’m sorry, Dean,” came the quick interruption, as he sat down to tie his boots. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, obviously. But that doesn’t take away my responsibility in it, and for that I’m sorry.”

“Sam, would you listen for a second?”

Sam sighed as he finished with his boots and stood without looking up from the floor.

“Look,” Dean said, confident he now had his brother’s full attention, “I’m not saying that what you and Cas did was right. We ought to know by now that lying to each other does nothing but create steaming piles of crap like this whole thing has been.”

Sam only barely managed to hide his flinch, the feel of his brother’s hands on him still tingling on his skin like a fever dream that would never be real.

“But I understand why you did it,” Dean continued, then backtracked, “Well, no, actually, I don’t. I understand why you felt you had to trick me with the whole Alex thing at first, but I don’t understand why you lied to me and kept it up for so long afterward. But whatever happened, it happened, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it except manage the consequences best we can.”

 _Even if it means getting turned on seeing you in my dreams for a while,_ Dean mentally added, but didn’t want to freak Sam out by saying aloud.

Sam still didn’t say anything, so he took that as a good sign and pushed on.

“Now, I say we leave all of this where we stand,” he said, confidently, “and go back to the way things were. We’ve fought our way back from worse than this, and we’re gonna fight our way back from it too. But that’ll never happen if we stay apart, and the quicker we get things back to normal, the quicker we can put all of this in the past and move on. I’m not going to apologize for being angry, but I think if tonight proves anything, it’s that we’re both willing to do whatever it takes to keep each other safe. So I’m sorry, Sam, for making you leave before, and I’m not mad anymore, about anything. So what do you say we just finish this case, head home, and forget this whole mess ever happened?”

All throughout his little speech, which he felt like was pretty convincing, Sam’s expression hadn’t altered. Now, he picked up his gun from off the floor and stuffed it in the waist of his pants, the final touch before he was ready to go. When he spoke, it was in that same tone, and his gaze only shifted from the floor to the wall and not anywhere near Dean.

“I can’t.”

Dean started slightly, not sure if he’d heard correctly when Sam never continued.

“I’m sorry? You can’t? _Why_ can’t you?” A flare of hot anger, he wasn’t even sure from where, rose up in him. “I’m telling you to come home, Sam. I’m trying to tell you I can let go of what you did, the sex and the lies and all those months you spent _catfishing_ me for whatever idiot mental health reasons you were aiming for. I’m offering _forgiveness_ here, and you, what? You _can’t_? Well, why the hell not?”

There, he saw it—that little twitch in Sam’s jaw, that tiny roll of his shoulders, that little flicker of something deep and dark over his features that let him know he was on the verge of breaking apart his brother’s controlled emotions two seconds before it inevitably happened.

“Because that’s not why I did it, Dean!” he practically shouted, eyes finally cutting up to meet his for a heartbeat before darting away again. “All those weeks of texting—you just assumed why I did it. It had nothing to do with me pushing an agenda. Do you really think I would do something like that, after all this time, all the years we’ve lived together and hunted together, everything we’ve been through…you really believe I would risk lying to you, hurting you like that just to make you eat a freaking _salad_? It's like you don't even know me at all, Dean!”

“What was I supposed to think, Sam?” Dean shot back. “You could’ve just let it go. You could’ve never texted me and Alex would have just disappeared in the wind.”

“No, he wouldn’t have, Dean—that’s the problem!”

Dean looked at him disbelievingly.

“What?”

“You mentioned him all the time,” Sam said, and he was looking him in the eyes now but Dean didn’t like what he saw there. “In the middle of a meal, in the middle of a case, during the day, at night—for weeks before I texted you as Alex, you were talking about him nonstop, Dean.”

Dean closed his mouth as he remembered Sam was right; he guessed he _had_ mentioned Alex a lot. He just hadn’t thought about that before now, hadn’t even noticed he’d been doing it.

“And I mean, I get it,” Sam continued, more calm now. “He was the first person you could have in your life like that without having to sacrifice something else. He was a lone hunter, you got along, he cared about you—having him meant you didn’t have to give up anything. So I can’t blame you for how you felt about him. But it’s different for me, because I knew; I knew it was you the whole time.”

Dean looked up and saw stark pain in Sam’s face along with a tag team of other emotions—guilt, dread, sadness.

“So what are you saying, Sam?” he pressed, feeling like everything was upside-down if he even had to ask that question at this point in their lives.

“I’m saying—” Sam’s voice caught, and he shook his head and looked down, all the negative emotions darkening his ever-youthful, handsome face.

Dean watched him get himself under control, by pushing away the feelings one by one until there was nothing left but an empty sort of remorse. Finally, he looked up, his eyes damp and glittering in the dying fire’s glow, but his expression that of a brave man knowing he was cornered and accepting his fate gracefully.

“I’m saying I think I’m in love with you. I _know_ I am.”

Dean felt his own expression go blank with the punch of those words in his gut. He wondered in a flash if Henry Devereux still had a spell on them both.

He couldn’t have said anything even if he’d wanted to. Sam’s face fell a little more but he went on, voice strong but incredibly sad as he answered Dean’s most obvious unspoken question.

“I don’t know when, or how. The more I’ve looked back, the less I understand it myself. I’ve thought all the way back to Jess, and…and I don’t know. Maybe I was already in love with you, all the way back then. I thought about you all the time, and I did miss you, Dean. I don’t know if I ever told you that, but I really, really did. I missed you every day. And I could’ve gone back to my life after Jess, or at least tried, but I never did. I never even tried; I just left with you and never came back.”

Dean had to remind himself to breathe normally. If there was one thing he’d learned, it’s that he had to let Sam speak his mind when he needed it, no matter what. So he stayed quiet and felt his fingernails press crescents into his palms, didn’t let himself think anything solid yet until he’d heard it all.

“Then there was Amelia," Sam went on, never looking at Dean, never losing that pain around his eyes, words coming out rushed and a little rambling, “and I could’ve tried for a normal life with her too. And it’s easy to say it’s The Life, you know? ‘The Life pulled me back in; The Life made me who I am.’ But it’s not. If it weren’t for you, I would have left The Life a long time ago, or worse, I’d be dead or Satan’s puppet, or chugging demon blood in an alley somewhere. I’m alive today because of you. I am who I am because of _you_. I love the life I’ve chosen, but only because I’ve chosen to spend it with you—”

Dean felt something decades old tighten in his chest at that.

“—and I can’t just keep pretending like that’s normal anymore. That’s not how brothers are supposed to feel about each other. I’m not supposed to choose you before everyone else, including the woman I supposedly love. I’m not supposed to be happy living alone with you, doing everything with you all the time, and being content with it like that. I’m not supposed to be willing to do anything for you, no matter the consequences, but I am. And being Alex…”

Dean had to tilt his head a little to see the expression on Sam’s face as he trailed off and had to regain himself again.

“Being Alex helped me realize that,” he continued at last, and the emotions were breaking him now, cutting across his expression like lightning in an empty sky. “The way I feel about you isn’t normal, Dean, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything I’ve put you through because of what I am, but I’m especially sorry for this, because this has nothing to do with demon blood or cosmic plans; this is all me and my permanently screwed-up brain. You deserve to at least have a life with people who are good for you, and I can’t be that anymore, not when I think of you like this now.”

He squinted his eyes shut as the last word broke, and when he opened them again, there were still tears but he was valiantly holding them back.

“Sam—” Dean’s own voice was like shards of glass, and Sam cut him off before he could say anything more.

“I know I messed up,” he said softly. "No matter how much I honestly believed I was doing it for you, I realize now that all of this was a mistake. I never meant to hurt you, Dean; I never have, but somehow I always do, and I'm sorry. But you have no idea how hard it was, texting you every night and then seeing you the next morning and having to pretend like…like I didn’t know how you felt about Alex. Spending every day with you, remembering how it was back in Virginia, wishing I could see you that happy again, wishing I could _be_ that happy again….I can’t go back to that. It wouldn’t be fair to you or me. That’s why I think it would just be better if we parted ways, at least for a while.”

A jolt of protest went up Dean’s spine, but Sam continued, his voice slowing and quieting until it was barely audible.

“Maybe someday I’ll get over this, like I did the demon blood, and wanting a normal life,” he murmured, pushing a strand of hair back out of his solemn face and then running that same hand over his chin. “But until then, I’ll just have to keep away, keep finding guys like Trevor on the road. I mean, maybe I can get it out of my system and then I’ll be able to come back home.”

He took two steps back, and it felt like two hundred miles for both of them.

“Dean, I’m sorry.”

Sam got to the door before the older Winchester could find his voice, and even as he spoke, he was still trying to piece together every intense thought raining down in his head. And maybe he should make sure he knew what he was saying before he said it, but all he knew was that Sammy was walking away from him, and that shouldn’t happen, ever.

“Sam.”

His brother stopped with his hand on the rusty knob, and Dean could see he was fighting not to lose more control that he already had.

“Please,” he said, turning only halfway around, “please, don’t make this harder. I’ve already made my choice, Dean.”

“Well, don’t I get a say in this?” Dean asked, and instead of it coming out tough and challenging like he intended, he just sounded distraught and a little panicked. “I mean, I _am_ the other side of this crazy coin. If you’ve already made up your mind, it won’t matter if you hear me out. Right?”

Sam turned all the way around, and his jaw was trembling and his eyes tight.

“I already know what you’re going to say,” he replied. “You’re going to say that we’re family, and we can work this out, and I _can’t_ , Dean, not this time—“

“No,” he interrupted, “you’re wrong, Sam. That’s not what I was going to say.”

Sam closed his eyes, his shoulders falling, giving up the battle but still hopeless.

“Then, what?”

It took Dean a minute to gather his thoughts, which he took, because at least Sam wasn’t walking away now. A whole lifetime of moments rushed through his head, almost all at once, and out of them he picked little seeds, little feelings he had ignored and swept aside—Sam as a baby staring up at him with the prettiest hazel eyes, and him vowing to protect this new tiny thing with his whole life (even if he’d thought it would just be from bee stings and broccoli)…Sam as a toddler offering him every crap toy from the cereal boxes just to make him smile, and him crawling into bed beside him at night just to hold him…Sam as a kid acting in some cheesy school play, and him proudly thinking he was the best-looking one up there even if his legs were a little too long…Sam as a new adult leaving for college, and him not wanting to speak for weeks afterward…Sam singing too loudly in the passenger seat after he’d managed to drag him to a bar…Sam’s silken hair askew on the pillow across a motel room…Sam buying him chili fries or pie when he was upset…Sam laughing at something dumb he said…Sam rolling his eyes at something dumb he said…Sam hugging him and pressing his face into his cheek…Sam giving him a reason to have faith when everything else ripped apart…Sam cutting off the head of a vampire before it could sink its teeth into him…Sam holding back the Devil before he could beat him to death…Sam proving over and over there was nothing he wouldn’t do for him…Sam’s dimpled smile lighting up a whole room…Sam kissing him in a kitchen in Virginia….

It was all Sam, everywhere he looked, every memory saturated with him; even with the ones he wasn’t in—the Stanford years, his trip to Hell, Lisa and Ben—Sam’s essence still lingered on the edges. No matter how potent or real they’d felt, those were just the times in Dean’s life when Sam was absent; in the end they were just the waiting periods for when he would have Sam back. It was all Sam, spilling over into every corner like a flood that just wouldn’t recede. Just Sam, everywhere, his whole life.

His blind stare had somehow drifted to the dusty floor as realization after realization hit, and now he looked back up and suddenly his brother’s tired, miserable, sweet, downturned face was everything he’d hoped Alex was and more— _so much more_.

At his long silence, Sam glanced up questioningly, but seeing him looking he dropped his gaze again, a piece of his long hair falling into his face, and swallowed, waiting.

Dean started to open his mouth but wasn’t even sure where to start; he’d never been very good at this, but he had to tell him. Sam had to know.

“Sammy, I’m sorry.”

He looked up in surprise and seeing the seriousness of his older brother’s face, the glistening of his wide eyes, he frowned incredulously.

“ _What_?”

“This is my fault,” Dean said, honestly, ready to kick himself across the state line back to Kansas for being so _blind_.

“What? No, Dean, the curse—”

“I’m not talking about the curse, Sam,” he said, shutting him down as the past seven months’ worth of memories to slot into proper perspective. “I’m talking about this—us, me accusing you about those texts. I should’ve seen the truth. I was stupid and I didn’t think it through, and I’m sorry.”

“None of this is your fault,” came the soft, sincere reply.

“You’re right, it isn’t,” he agreed, gaining confidence in his words with every passing second because they just felt so right bouncing around in his head. “You know why? Because there isn’t a fault here.”

Rather than acknowledging the denial starting to form on his brother’s face, he jumped onward, 

“Sam, you said you are who you are because of me, right?”

“Yeah,” he answered, obviously confused but listening.

“And you said you’ve left everything else for me, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re happy living with me, in the bunker, sharing meals and cases and takin’ road trips to kill monsters, right?”

“Dean, what’s—”

“And you felt like, back in Virginia, we had something, right? Something different, because we acted like a couple, or whatever—sex and dates and the whole nine? That it made you rethink our whole setup here?”

Sam swallowed and his frown deepened, but he answered honestly,

“Yeah, but, Dean—”

“Sam, do you know what you sound like?”

Sam huffed, clearly fighting an eye roll, and gave up trying to redirect anything.

“What?” he asked, obviously having no idea when the answer was so stupidly obvious it had been staring them in the face for friggin’ _decades_.

“Me, Sam. You sound like me.”

Dark brows furrowed, confusion deepening on his stupidly adorable and sexy face, and god, Dean really was an idiot.

“Sam, listen to me,” he said, really actually smiling for the first time in a long time. “You and me, we’re different from everybody else we know. We’ve been all over Creation, seen things that would give even most hunters nightmares, and we’ve lost just about everyone else except each other. You know why? Because we _can’t_ lose each other; even when the whole freaking universe tries, it can’t tear us apart forever. Soulmates, perverts, whatever you want to call us, we're tied together in a way that most married couples could only dream of. Hell, if it’s dates you want, we go on those all the time already; we just haven’t played footsie under the sticky diner tables, but I can do that if you want. After everything we’ve been through together, everything we already are to each other, who the hell gets to tell us we can’t have friggin’ _sex_ whenever we want it?”

Sam was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, which he didn’t really think was fair, considering he was the one who'd started this. In the face of it, though, some of the hilarity drained from his mood; after all, Sam didn’t take things the way he did. Sam was serious, and worried a lot, and wasn’t going to accept Dean’s jokes as proof enough.

“Point is, Sammy,” he said, letting his eyes shine but bringing the mood down with the tone of his voice, “if you think you’re screwed in the head, then I must be too, because if you’re in love with me then I’m definitely in love with you, just as much.”

He saw Sam’s breath catch, and in an instant he thought of how he’d felt when those incredulous eyes had stared at him in the darkness of his Stanford apartment at the beginning of their search for their dad, so long ago, after so long apart. Looking back, he could remember suddenly feeling like he could breathe easy for the first time in two years, now that he could see those beautiful hazel eyes again, like the world was suddenly right because Sammy was here, and he added honestly,

“I think I always have been.”

He let Sam process that, and once he was sure he had, he spoke again.

“So I say we give this a shot.”

Sam swallowed again as he took in everything, and Dean waited patiently, and raised his eyebrows when he finally looked up at him. The heavy darkness was gone from Sam’s eyes, the guilt and pain and everything else just shadows that were fading quickly.

“You have to be sure about this,” he said firmly. “Dean, if you’re not…"

“I am,” he replied a little impatiently. “After all, I don’t really see much changing other than the sex, and hell, if that’s wrong then I don’t want to be right.”

Sam blushed and laughed then, just a shocked exhale probably at the whole situation, but then his eyes got wet again and the darkness was gone completely—at least it was metaphorically, but the fire was almost out now and the room was nearing black.

“So what now?” the younger man asked genuinely.

“Now,” said Dean, “we head back into town, get a few hours’ sleep because I don’t know about you, but after all that, _I_ need it at least. Tomorrow we’ll go and see if things worked out for Mr. and Mrs. Colson and their ‘spiritual’ lovers, and after that we go home, together.”

A small smile formed on Sam’s lips.

“Sounds good to me.”

Seeing the intensity of the relief and hope and _love_ in Sam's eyes made Dean crave to kiss him, the memory of the taste fresh on his mind since Virginia, but he held himself back. This wasn't the right moment exactly, with his little brother looking so weary and vulnerable, like he might fall over at any second despite that unbelievable strength Dean knew he possessed. Instead of touching him like he truly wanted, Dean settled on giving him the warmest smile in response he could manage, gathering up his own gun and the car keys, and cupping his unshaven cheek for a brief second. Sam swallowed at the touch, eyes full of emotion but dry now as he gazed at Dean like he was the sun after a month of dark, like he was thanking him in ways words could never describe. Dean drank in that look, smiled at him again with an assurance that said everything his own words failed to do, before leading Sam out the door into the chilly night air back toward the car.

+++++++

Turned out, Mr. and Mrs. Colson were perfectly happy divorcing each other in favor of marrying the currently separating couple who had been at their dinner party. The husband of the _“other woman”_ asked Mrs. Colson to lunch, and the two of them were laughing hysterically when Dean and Sam passed by in the Impala (after spending the remainder of the night sleeping fitfully in Sam's hotel room, in separate beds so far but no less comfortable for that after so long apart). Henry Devereux’s moving boxes disappeared and his manager at the flower shop said he’d quit that morning to do some more traveling. So with four people happier and one do-gooder monster free to do good, Sam and Dean left town quietly before sunset the following day.

The drive home was, as always, filled with the same three cassette tapes and Dean’s inherent inability to control his karaoke. Sam complained half-heartedly, as always, but still bought Dean a mini-pie from the gas station when they stopped to fill up. Everything was almost the same, except when Sam inevitably fell asleep halfway home, Dean brushed some of his hair back with lingering fingers trying to get used to freely touching Sam the same way he’d touched Alex.

Once they arrived at the bunker, Cas was there and greeted Sam with a surprised hug; upon realizing what had happened (with barely any explanation offered), he informed them he had to be away for a little while—duty called, and all that. With a meaningful smile to Dean and a sweet one to Sam, he was gone in a flutter of papers from the library table. Sam chuckled and Dean shrugged helplessly at their weird friend, and then the brothers went their separate ways to unpack. 

Sam spent the next several hours replacing all his things to their proper spots and just getting used to being home again after believing he would be wandering the roads for the unforeseeable future. It was well into the evening when a soft knock startled him.

“Come in,” he called, setting aside his book and picking up his tea from the side table to take another sip.

Dean entered, and Sam noticed right away that he lingered awkwardly a step in, one hand still on the doorknob.

“Hey,” the older man said, a little fumblingly, “you got a minute? I want to show you something.”

Sam felt the beginnings of worry creep up the back of his neck, but he squashed it down with the reassurance that Dean usually meant what he said, and he’d seemed pretty damn certain earlier. That firmly in mind, he followed him willingly from the room.

His older brother didn’t hesitate for a moment before opening his own bedroom door, but once they were inside, Sam could feel nervous green eyes watching for his reaction.

It didn’t take more than a few seconds for the younger hunter to process what he was seeing. The king-sized bed took up a lot more space than the old, full-sized one had, but it had obviously been chosen with care to match the furniture of the bunker, made of the same basic sturdy wood and fitting into the room’s atmosphere with the same aesthetic ease.

“Dean, when did you get this?” was his first question, because surely it hadn’t been in the last few hours.

His brother seemed a little embarrassed, and he shifted slightly on his feet.

“A while back,” he admitted, “after Ale…uh, you…and I had been texting for a few weeks. You, Alex, whatever, mentioned something about having a place to sleep if you came to visit, and I thought….I mean, I wanted to be prepared, in case…”

Sam was looking at the bed, the meticulous way the four pillows had been fluffed, the cheap but obviously new navy blue bedspread, the extra wool blanket tucked between it and the sheet, and he couldn’t help but smirk faintly.

“Look,” Dean’s voice broke through his thoughts, and he turned to see him with his hands up mollifyingly, “I know this is all new for both of us, and I don’t want to start out rushing anything. We take this at a pace we both agree on, okay? No questions asked. If you feel like I’m pushing you too hard, you let me know. I mean it, Sam, because I’m good with whatever, but I don’t want you to think I’m expecting anything, because I’m not. However you want it, that’s how it’ll be.”

Sam wondered for a fleeting moment how Dean could not have understood before, but he quickly remembered that while his brother was the best man he knew, he still struggled seeing himself as desirable past the physical. Sam had never been very good at flirting, but even through the dark times he’d always been very good at being Dean’s brother, so he took a breath and asked,

“How do _you_ want it?”

Dean didn't see the shy but sure smile dancing on Sam’s lips, because he was picking at a loose string on the bedspread.

“I told you, man,” he replied, thoughtlessly sweeping out some wrinkles with the back of his hand, “I’m ready for anything, so it’s all down to you. We have all the time we need. We can take this fast or slow; I’m good either way.”

“No, Dean.”

It must have been clearer in his tone now, because his big brother paused and looked up with a focused gaze at his face.

Sam didn’t move any closer, but he stared back into Dean’s eyes with a look he hoped was both playful and sexy even with his limited skill in the area.

“I mean, _how do you want it_?”

Perfect lips parted as soft eyes widened, and Sam continued, voice as low and candid as if they were discussing a case in the library.

“Do you want it fast or slow? Because I gotta tell you, Dean, I want to spend the next two hours at least just feeling you, if you're up for it.”

He saw Dean inhale sharply, and after a fluttery and mildly sarcastic, “Okay, then,” he was flipping off the bedside lamp.

The moment the room was dimmed, the younger brother grabbed Dean’s face with both hands to kiss him solidly. Dean’s owns hands went reflexively under his shirt, feeling the skin there but not attempting to do much more than just kiss in return, his mouth warm and open for Sam.

Sam stumbled a bit in the dark at just the perfect angle for Dean to shove him backwards onto the bed and climb over him. Then, despite the heat building between their bodies in the familiar chilly air, it seemed the reality of it kicked in at the exact same second for them both.

Dean removed his mouth from Sam’s lips at the same moment Sam turned his head slightly away. Though the room was almost too dark to see, it was obvious what they both were thinking. They hadn’t needed to see each other’s faces to know one another’s thoughts for years, anyway.

“This is going to be a little weird at first, Dean,” Sam said wryly.

His brother was silent for only a half-second, and then he agreed in almost a whisper,

“Yeah.”

As the older Winchester rolled off of him onto the other side of the bed, Sam repositioned himself to lie close enough to feel his warmth but not close enough to touch him without his consent. Even though they both needed a moment, it was still frustrating not to be able to run his hands along his body, just centimeters away.

“Pretty freakin’ weird,” Dean continued the thought into the darkness. “Especially since every time up ’til now has been because one of us was gonna die otherwise.”

Sam was quiet for a moment, and then he spoke softly.

“Not that last night, in Virginia. Right?”

He could practically feel Dean remembering their slow touches and long kisses of that night, and there was a brief silence that was oddly comfortable despite the uncertainty in it. Then, his older brother’s strong, rough voice spoke up again, matching Sam’s low murmur.

“Yeah, not then.”

And Dean was bending over him again, his full lips finding Sam’s in the dark as his hand slipped around the younger man’s torso and under his side.

The atmosphere was different now, almost as if they’d been transported back to that night just from mentioning it, and Sam welcomed Dean’s closeness just like he had then…just like he always had, really. He kissed him back, and didn’t realize he’d lost himself in it until Dean pulled away to catch his breath. He felt strangely high, especially since he could hardly see, and the smell and taste and warmth of his brother were starting to get intoxicating blended with the peace that had also flooded him since the cabin.

“You even _taste_ better than them,” he didn’t even realize he was murmuring, his eyes closed as he cupped the back of Dean’s head in one hand to pull him down again.

He felt Dean’s smile and tiny chuckle, partly amused and very self-satisfied, against his mouth, and then every man he’d slept with since the start of this slipped completely out of both their minds.

Dean climbed up onto Sam’s lap without breaking the kisses, and neither of them pushed for more for a long time, just fingers carding through hair and tracing along soft cotton. At some point Dean did something with his tongue that made Sam hum, and then a minute later Sam’s wandering fingers touched low enough to make Dean grunt approvingly and shift overtop him.

That put him at the perfect position for Sam to get his hands well under Dean’s ratty old t-shirt, sliding it up until Dean had no choice but to help him pull it off.

Sam’s hands immediately continued wandering, this time over the bare skin that was just starting to get warm under his touches. Dean reciprocated by adjusting, this time getting up onto his knees so that he could run a hand down flat over Sam’s crotch.

Sam tried not to react too eagerly, still a little gun shy from everything, but Dean apparently wasn’t having that. With a purposeful move, he groped at the hardness forming under his palm, rubbing at it until Sam squirmed despite himself, gasping in cool air.

“There ya go,” came that low, rasping voice he loved so much, full of encouragement.

“Dean, I’ve, uh,” he fumbled, feeling bashful and blushing, like a little virgin bride or something, which he definitely was _not_ , “I’ve been…getting some practice in case…well, not that I expected, but…”

“What kind of practice we talkin’, Sammy?” returned that damn _voice_ , as that damn _hand_ twisted over his clothed, hardening cock again.

Instead of answering, he pushed up on Dean’s chest to make him move; when the older brother rolled obediently onto the other pillow, Sam went straight for the elastic waistband of his pajama pants, yanking them down with some willing help from Dean, who chuckled warmly again but this time a little more breathlessly than before.

Sam stayed where he was between Dean’s legs and curved his fingers around the smooth, half-hard cock. In spite of the yearning that had been overwhelming him since that last night in Virginia, he was in no hurry. Instead, he unseeingly played with light fingertips around the head and down the shaft, feeling it harden and lengthen under his attention. Dean’s faint catch of breath made him move with more intent, his curved hand sliding down the length and then back up loosely, not trying to stimulate him too much, just feeling the heaviness and heat of him twitching against his palm. God, he loved this, just the feel of a cock in his hand. He wondered what that said about him, especially given whose it was, but he didn’t care. He’d be a cock slut for Dean if that’s what they both wanted; he'd already murdered and been murdered for and with him several times over, so it wasn’t like he really had any standards to break with him whatsoever at this point.

When Dean let out a tense sigh and gave a half-thrust, Sam wrapped his fingers around the base, stroking firmly with his thumb as he spoke.

“I wanted to be able to do what _you_ did to me,” he explained, hoping he was making real sense. “I wanted to be able to do this right, for you.”

He dropped his head and tasted the tip on his tongue.

Dean made a slightly shocked noise above him, one hand moving to slip through his hair.

Sam suckled for a moment before sliding his mouth slowly down, taking him in inch by inch until he was almost at the base. He started to choke a little when it hit his throat (still not exactly an expert at this). Shifting on his knees to get a better angle, he pulled off for a moment before taking it in again, while one hand kept holding the base and the other toyed with Dean’s heavy balls.

He listened carefully while his brother’s breaths sped up and felt every brush of fingertips through his hair, but half of him was distracted in his own enjoyment as he squeezed his eyes shut and bobbed up and down, licking and sucking all the while. He felt silly admitting it even to himself, but he really couldn’t believe how much different even this was compared to what he’d been experiencing the last couple of months.

“Yeah, definitely better than them,” he said in half-amused wonder when he pulled off for an instant, immediately licking all the way down one side to press a faint sucking kiss to his sack.

He heard a grunt deliberately loud, and unwillingly relented his movements to let Dean pull him up. He spread himself on top of his older brother, unable to help himself, rubbing their bare skin together slowly while he dropped a few kisses into the dip between Dean’s throat and shoulder. He felt like he was in a half-dream where he mostly had control of his movements but not fully aware enough to stop them.

His older brother planted a hand firmly on the back of his head and another on his waist. He felt it when Dean turned his face into Sam’s hair and his voice was loud in his ear even though he was talking quietly.

“How ‘bout we agree not to talk about those other guys again, Sam?”

Sam paused and raised his head at that, faintly surprised by the jealousy clear in Dean’s tone. His eyes now fully adjusted, he could just see the outline of Dean’s face inches from his own and could detect a touch of unpleasantness in his features.

“If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it right,” the other man stated with no uncertainty. “No hook-ups with chicks from bars, no one-nighters with dudes named Trevor, none of it. It’s you and me, and that’s all. We’re clear on that, right?”

Sam hadn’t really had time to think about it, but the idea—of Dean leaving for his favorite dive and returning in the morning smelling like perfume—made the younger Winchester feel sick. He didn’t want any of those women to touch Dean again. He didn’t want anyone touching Dean again, besides him. And he’d heard the same sentiment in Dean’s voice as he’d spoken, obviously thinking about that ridiculous young guy coming out of Sam’s motel room the morning before. As if Sam would ever try to compare him to Dean…as if anyone compared to Dean, in any way, ever. Nobody could even come close.

Dean’s question wasn’t even serious enough for an answer, in Sam’s opinion. So rather than answering, he simply dropped his head again and kissed his brother more deeply and intensely than any kiss yet.

“I guess we’re clear,” the older Winchester droned when they finally parted.

Sam smiled at him, a real, rare, genuine smile, and then he crawled down to trail kisses along Dean’s chest, relishing in the groan he got when he bit at one hard nipple. Then, not satisfied yet, he shifted back down to continue what he’d been doing, this time balancing himself better so he could swallow Dean’s cock easily.

He heard Dean groan and then the thud of his fist against the headboard.

“Damn, that’s good. Sam…”

After only a couple more minutes, Dean shoved Sam up and finally wrestled his pajama bottoms off him. The two of them, now completely bare, ended up in a tangle of blankets on the enormous mattress, and then it was almost fun, like the wrestling they’d done so many times as kids, or the real fighting they did against their enemies now—moments when they paid such close attention to one another there was almost nothing else in the world, predicting movements before they happened, planning for them, moving in a flow they create themselves—only them, like Dean had said. 

Dean listened closely to every hitch of breath from Sam and memorized exactly where he’d touched to make it happen; Sam paid attention to everything he did that made Dean kiss him in barely-concealed gratitude. There was a give-and-take, just like there had always been, and this was just another interpretation of it, wasn’t it? Just another way to manifest it, even better than fighting alongside each other on a hunt or even just the day-to-day of living so close. This was new, and assuring, and _fun_ , and in the end Sam wasn’t sure if he actually wanted to laugh at how easy it was with Dean, as themselves, without any curses or spells or disguises in the way. It was just…normal, and natural, and holy hell, Cas had been right all along, about everything. He would have to remember to thank him for that later.

At last, Sam found himself jolting when Dean’s fingers, slicked with something he’d pulled out of his bed stand drawer, prodded bluntly against his hole.

“Damn,” Dean panted enthusiastically when the tip of his index finger slipped in, “you’re all good and open for me already, aren’t you? ‘Atta boy, Sammy. _Nice_.”

“Shut up,” Sam gasped, but he couldn’t help but be amused as he settled onto his back and pushed his toes into the mattress with his knees bent, giving Dean better access.

The finger went in deeper, then a second slick one joined it, and it was almost embarrassing, how quickly Sam was writhing on them, biting back a whine. And when Dean stripped Sam’s throbbing cock a few times with his other hand, the younger man couldn’t resist sitting up and pulling his brother down onto him again, kissing and licking into his mouth with a hum.

Dean allowed it, smiled fondly, when Sam’s arms went around his neck and he found himself wrapped up in a long-limbed hug. Sammy always had been kind of a sap, so it didn’t particularly surprise him when he felt a little kiss brush against his earlobe. What did surprise him, though, was the fierce neediness saturating little brother’s voice when he spoke.

“Want you in me, Dee,” he whispered, the last sound of his name cut off as Sam licked the spot where he’d just kissed, sending a shudder down Dean’s spine. “Want you to come in me again. I want more of it.”

If there was a man who could resist that, Dean definitely wasn’t the guy, not with Sam sounding as sincere as he’d ever been in his life.

He pushed up again, and clasped a hand—okay, he would admit it, lovingly—onto Sam’s defined, freshly-shaven jaw for an instant before sliding down between his open thighs, shoving them up gently and exposing his hole. Bracing the back of Sam’s left knee on his own shoulder, Dean guided his cock into the slick heat, a satisfied breath slipping out of him at how smoothly it went in.

One hand grasping at the wooden headboard, Sam keened and arched slightly, shifting when Dean readjusted his grip on his legs and bent him more so that he could go as deep as possible.

Dean shoved upwards as he pulled out, just to hear the whimper the dramatic angle tore out of Sam, and went back in with a little circle of his hips. He started out at a good rhythm, because Sammy didn’t seem like he wanted to waste any time if the glimmer of wetness at his tip was anything to go by, and Dean didn’t either. He rocked in and out, never losing speed while the bed creaked quietly, fumbling to move one of Sam’s hands to hold up his own leg so he could toy with those nice balls and spread Sam’s wetness with his fingertips.

Sam panted, his cock jerking visibly as he did what he could to match Dean’s movements.

“So good,” he gasped. “Dean, you do it so good.”

Maybe Dean was a bit of a sap himself, who knew, but at that, he turned his head to kiss the fine-boned ankle still perched over his right shoulder. Then he lowered himself down, trusting Sam to keep his legs open while he flattened one hand over the muscled chest under him. With his other hand he gently gripped the long, damp strands of his hair and moved them out of Sam’s eyes, a gesture he’d repeated so many times now and probably would forever, and those pretty eyes fluttered open to look at him.

The glazed-over hazel was so soft with a look of almost drowsy bliss, Dean smiled back and dropped down the rest of the way to settle a kiss on his mouth which Sam readily returned. Then he shifted again, this time up hauling himself up onto his knees so he could keep thrusting deeply but stay as he was, looking down into Sam’s flushed face and feeling his breaths huff out with each shove inside.

Sam’s hands scrambled at Dean’s arms and sides, distantly feeling how Dean’s lower belly rubbed against his balls, how that thick cock felt driving against his insides. Dizzily, he tilted his head back on the pillow as Dean breathed out wordless, barely audible praises, his movements becoming faster and faster at a steady pace.

Sam felt the pleasure coiling, and reached down to pull roughly at his own dick where it lay heavily on his stomach.

Dean sat up again, hands on Sam’s thighs to keep them spread, and looked down without stopping.

“Yeah,” he growled, loud over the noise of their movements, “show me, come on, Sammy. Let me see you touch yourself, little brother. Make it feel good, that’s it.”

Sam might’ve thought it would mess with his head to be reminded that he was Dean’s little brother in a moment like this, but once again he was wrong about himself; somehow, the term sparked a new outpouring of pleasure, and with barely any warning he was coming, shooting across his hand and stomach and even a little onto his own face with a sharp, uncontainable cry.

Dean rasped out a curse, and then he was coming too, hunching over a bit with the intensity of it, his hips canting involuntarily, watching attentively as Sam trembled with his own aftershocks. When it was over, he swallowed in long breaths of cleansing air and pulled out, laying himself down onto the right side of the bed with his body tilted towards Sam’s.

For a long few minutes, they simply caught their breaths in the silence, and then Dean moved his cheek on the pillow so he could better see Sam’s profile outlined by the yellowy hall light from under the door.

“You good?” he asked quietly, but he wasn’t really worried—he could see Sam’s eyes blinking slowly, a sure sign he was content and close to sleep.

The younger Winchester stirred, stretched just a little, and winced with a smile as he felt the beginning ramifications of their activities on his body.

“Yeah,” he sighed, relaxing again.

Dean felt a reflexive little half-smile curve his mouth, and watched sleepily as Sam turned to look up at him from where he was further down on the plump pillows. At this point in their lives, both were virtuosos at looks that transcended conversation, and that’s what this was—a shared moment that needed absolutely no words, and they both knew it. With another soft sigh, Sam’s eyes fell shut and he relaxed completely.

Dean found that he drifted off most comfortably on his side facing his brother, with his body half-curved around Sam and one arm draped over his chest, pulling him close so that there wasn't any space between them as he buried his nose in his brother's fine, dark hair. His final thought before he too fell into a deep sleep was that he'd previously thought sleeping next to Alex was perfect; he'd had no idea then what he'd been missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! Epilogue next week. <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much to everyone who's read so far and I hope you enjoy this super short little epilogue! Spoiler: our boys are doing great. ;)

Dean had been right, at least partly, when he'd said nothing much was going to change aside from the sex. Other than where Sam slept, things stayed pretty much the same after that for a while; they ate hearty breakfasts in the kitchen, scoured the latest news pages for cases, poured over research, argued about what to watch on Netflix….At first nothing much changed at all, except that they both slept better than they had in years, possibly their whole lives—probably largely due to the fervor of their activities before they actually _went_ to sleep, but also just due to proximity; neither of them had admitted it until now, but it had taken some adjusting when they’d gotten their own rooms and they weren’t sleeping a foot away from each other in motel beds anymore. It had been a bit of a surprise to them both, how easily eight full hours of sleep came when they were within arm’s reach of each other.

Besides that, though, things were normal. They took a few cases, offed the monsters, took turns picking places to eat on the road, and nothing about it felt too different (except maybe that Dean splayed a hand over Sam’s chest now as he leaned over his shoulder to look at his laptop, and Sam stood a little closer to his brother while they interviewed witnesses, and sometimes Dean’s playfulness escalated to some pretty handsy butt-smacking). In between two cases, Cas returned, stayed a while, smiled a lot at them (which was a little off-putting, actually), and then left again with a promise to keep in touch and see them soon.

Then, one morning a couple of months in, Sam realized all at once things _were_ different—not alarmingly so, not negatively at all, but definitely different. This he realized when he found himself slipping his hands around Dean’s waist from behind where the other man stood at the stove; before he knew what he was even doing, Sam had pushed his hands into the pockets of Dean’s soft robe for warmth.

“What are you making?” he asked, and there—that’s when the revelation hit him, that he had the whole front of his body pressed against Dean’s back, and neither of them seemed to think it was strange.

“We are gonna have the best French toast in the world for breakfast,” Dean announced proudly, sliding the spatula under a piece and holding it up on display before plopping it back down into the pan. “I got the recipe off this very passive-aggressive online forum for rich moms, so you know it’s gonna be good.”

Sam smiled, more at his sudden self-awareness than at the food itself, and just because he could, he dropped a kiss to Dean’s neck and smiled wider at the complete lack of surprise from Dean at the gesture. Then he sat at the table and just watched—watched as Dean poured some fresh orange juice, got their plates ready with some raspberries sprinkled on, dolloped with some thick Nutella on top. He was humming Metallica all the while, grinning in self-congratulations at his work, and Sam realized he’d seen Dean grinning a lot more often lately. Then he caught himself grinning about it, and realized the same about himself.

Maybe it was just a lull, and maybe the world would end again tomorrow and they’d get plunged into darkness all over and he’d miss that grin for months at a time while Dean fought the latest turmoil, but for now everything seemed to have gotten lighter, easier, just _better_. Their lives would never be perfect, or normal, or whatever, but this was good enough.

Dean scraped Sam's plate across the tabletop to him, his green eyes gleaming without a care as Sam smiled gratefully and picked up a fork. Sam was fully aware when Dean unconsciously pressed their legs together under the table, and then he stifled his amusement when his overexcited brother ended up with a Nutella mustache from too eager a bite. He wondered if maybe Dean had done it on purpose just to make him laugh, though, when the other man willingly laughed along with him, a real, glowy, unselfconscious laugh that made Sam smile all the more. As they wolfed down the (as predicted, delicious) French toast, Dean tapped his nearby laptop and began to recite the details of a potential case, pausing only for one distracted second to wipe some Nutella off Sam’s lip and suck it off his own finger before continuing.

Yeah, Sam thought, every other possible life he could’ve had fading permanently from his mind, this was more than good enough.

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like corny endings, okay.
> 
> Thank you again for reading, and special thanks to everyone who's left a comment! I've really enjoyed reading the different perspectives on this fic and your positivity has always added so much light to the last few weeks. If anyone's interested, I do have a couple more, shorter SPN fics to post soon. Have a good week, everybody!


End file.
